I have a considerable delay when booting linux from lilo (about 10 seconds) before the penguin logo appears and it really starts!
Today i did a full slackware install on a 850Mhz laptop and i could "measure" the difference, the latter was considerably faster compared to mine (2.8Ghz). why is this happening ?
I thought that maybe my partition table was not ok.

Here is my partition table for anyone who cares to take a look :

-------------------------------------------------------------
Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1275 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 1276 4864 28828611 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 1276 1394 955804+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 1395 2679 10321731 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 2680 3061 3068352 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda8 3062 3443 3068383+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda9 3444 3820 3028189+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda10 3821 4207 3108546 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda11 4208 4864 5277289+ b Win95 FAT32


-------------------------------------------------------------

thanks in advance

Can you post the output from "dmesg" just after you have booted. Is this a custom built kernel or one that came with your distro?

I have a very similar setup myself with no problems (though not so many fat32 partitions).. in fact I have the same number of logical/primary partitions. This is because I have a shared swap and boot partitition for 3 versions of linux (mandrake, debian, and slackware) along with a shared home directory (my hda11) and the var directory of my slackware install (the main linux version I use so it has lots of junk in there).

Sorry about the delay !

here is the dmesg outcome:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linux version 2.4.20 (root@midas) (gcc version 3.2.2) #2 Mon Mar 17 22:02:15 PST 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000d8000 - 00000000000e0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000e4000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001bf70000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000001bf70000 - 000000001bf7c000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000001bf7c000 - 000000001bf80000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 000000001bf80000 - 000000001c000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 000000002bf80000 - 000000002c000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fff80000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
447MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 114544
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 110448 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/SLACKWARE ro root=306
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 1594.824 MHz processor.
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 3178.49 BogoMIPS
Memory: 450160k/458176k available (1733k kernel code, 7628k reserved, 568k data, 112k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
CPU: L1 I cache: 0K, L1 D cache: 8K
CPU: L2 cache: 512K
CPU: After generic, caps: bfebf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: bfebf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel Genuine Intel(R) CPU 2.80GHz stepping 09
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd89b, last bus=2
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Using IRQ router ALI [10b9/1533] at 00:07.0
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:09.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:0b.1
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:0b.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:12.0
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.4.0 initialized
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
vesafb: framebuffer at 0xd8000000, mapped to 0xdc80d000, size 65472k
vesafb: mode is 1024x768x8, linelength=1024, pages=84
vesafb: protected mode interface info at c000:51c1
vesafb: scrolling: redraw
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device
pty: 512 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with HUB-6 MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
PCI: Enabling device 00:08.0 (0000 -> 0003)
PCI: Assigned IRQ 10 for device 00:08.0
Redundant entry in serial pci_table. Please send the output of
lspci -vv, this message (10b9,5457,103c,0850)
and the manufacturer and name of serial board or modem board
to serial-pci-info@lists.sourceforge.net.
register_serial(): autoconfig failed
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ALI15X3: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 80
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 00:10.0. Please try using pci=biosirq.
ALI15X3: chipset revision 196
ALI15X3: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x2040-0x2047, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0x2048-0x204f, BIOS settings: hdcio, hddio
hda: TOSHIBA MK4025GAS, ATA DISK drive
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
hdc: HL-DT-STCD-RW/DVD DRIVE GCC-4241N, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
blk: queue c0388784, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hda: 78140160 sectors (40008 MB), CHS=4864/255/63, UDMA(33)
hdc: ATAPI 24X DVD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 hda9 hda10 hda11 >
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 7777K size 1024 blocksize
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
md: linear personality registered as nr 1
md: raid0 personality registered as nr 2
md: raid1 personality registered as nr 3
md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
raid5: measuring checksumming speed
8regs : 967.200 MB/sec
32regs : 631.600 MB/sec
pIII_sse : 1087.600 MB/sec
pII_mmx : 986.800 MB/sec
p5_mmx : 954.400 MB/sec
raid5: using function: pIII_sse (1087.600 MB/sec)
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
LVM version 1.0.5+(22/07/2002)
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 65536)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 112k freed
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Linux Kernel Card Services 3.1.22
options: [pci] [cardbus] [pm]
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Intel PCIC probe: not found.
Databook TCIC-2 PCMCIA probe: not found.
PCI: Enabling device 00:0a.0 (0000 -> 0002)
PCI: Assigned IRQ 11 for device 00:0a.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:0c.0
Yenta IRQ list 02b8, PCI irq11
Socket status: 30000006
cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0800-0x08ff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x378-0x37f 0x408-0x40f 0x480-0x48f 0x4d0-0x4d7
cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.
mtrr: no more MTRRs available
mtrr: no more MTRRs available
mtrr: no more MTRRs available
mtrr: no more MTRRs available
mtrr: no more MTRRs available
mtrr: no more MTRRs available
mtrr: no more MTRRs available
--------------------------------------

BTW the kernel came with the distro.

about our partition table similarities xanas3712, my partitions are empty, only one has some backup files (not much stuff) and its my bridge contact between linux and windows ( i cant read nor write in the NTFS-HPFS partition where windows is, i have to jump from one OS to the other when i need linux information such as david_ross just asked, i get what i want, save it in my fat32 partition, reboot, windows, and back to linuxquestions.org.

BTW i wonder if there is a way so i can create a file and save the output of a command directly through command line before i startx (it would save me a lot of time).

thanks for your attention and patience