Slow boot

[Tony Nelson]

At 12:55 PM +0200 5/26/05, Boris Glawe wrote:
>There are kernel boot parameters to tell the kernel not to search for
>disk: It's something like hda=none hdb=none.
>
>May the parameter is a little different - google helps. As soon as you
>know what the correct parameter is, append it in the file /etc/grub.conf
>to the line "kernel ..."

Thank you for pointing that out.  man bootparam says:

The 'hd=noprobe' option

    Do not probe for this drive. For example,

        hdb=noprobe hdb=1166,7,17

    would disable the probe, but still specify the drive geometry so that
    it would be registered as a valid block device, and hence usable.

I'd missed that in man bootparam -- too much SCSI stuff, and I saw only the
cylinder numbers.  I only need the first part:

    hda=noprobe hdb=noprobe

It takes almost a minute off the boot time, and some of the remaining time
is being used for real work that doesn't show with the "quiet" boot param.

  [ Aside -- all that shows up with "quiet" is the "Auditing" line,
    also known as "the auditing pause", which is a complete red
    herring.  That line probably shouldn't even be displayed when
    "quiet" is set. ]

Still probes for about 30 seconds, though.  I tried adding:

    hdd=noprobe hdf=noprobe hdg=noprobe hdh=noprobe

but that didn't make any difference.  In the boot log:

Probing IDE inferface ide2...     [this line doesn't appear on the screen]
hde: WDC WD1200JB-75CRA0, ATA DISK drive    [the box says WD1200BBRTL]
ide2 at 0x9000-0x9007,0x8802 on irq 9
    [30 second pause before text scrolls by too fast to read, but I
     assume these lines are next]
Probing IDE interface ide3...
Probing IDE interface ide0...
ide0: Wait for ready failed before probe !
Probing IDE interface ide3...
Probing IDE interface ide4...
Probing IDE interface ide5...
hde: max request size: 128KiB
    [and so on]

So it still seems to be probing and pausing, just not so much.  Anyway,
saving a minute is great!  You've been a big help.
____________________________________________________________________
TonyN.:'                       <mailto:tonynelson at georgeanelson.com>
      '                              <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>