I've had quite the journey with my EeePC 701. I started learning about Linux with the prepackaged Xandros, then quickly ran out of customizability in tweaking it. I switched for a time to Ubuntu-eee (now Easy-Peasy), but my performance suffered too much for my liking. So I found Eeebuntu base and thought I'd found what I'd been looking for. But the boot time really left a lot to be desired: I've heard it's generally about a minute, but mine takes almost 5. I really started digging into this recently and discovered that one particular part of my boot process hangs for several minutes:

input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input9

waits for a few minutes, then returns:

[Fail]

My apologies for being more or less a newbie to the Linux scene, but what's going on here and what do I do about it?

I would try editing your xorg.conf file. I think maybe xorg-server's auto detect is taking unusually long.

Try adding these lines at the beginning of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf


See if this helps, I still think its your xorg.conf file...

Also you can go to and uncheck all that isnt needed, like login sounds, visual assistance, tracker, beagle anything that takes resources to start. You can always add delays to these startups if needed with a command

Adding that section to my xorg.conf does seem to make the boot process run a bit faster, but it didn't have any effect whatsoever at the ~2 minute stall after the line printed above; after the stall, it just prints [Fail] and moves on with the boot.

It did, however, seem to disable the easy-vertical-scroll feature on my touchpad, so I'll probably undo the xorg.conf change. Thanks for the suggestion, though.


I'd like to clarify that the boot process itself is not running terribly slow. There's just a single part of the boot that's causing a long delay. The rest of the boot process, before and after the stall, seems to be very quick.

Its still is a xorg.conf issue... Maybe even a HAL fdi policy issue. I would post your question in the Ubuntu forums and see if there is any similar problems... I'm sure that its a matter of adding & deleting a few lines in your config file.

Post your xorg.conf file. Let me see if there is something that could be changed.

Also again search Ubuntu forums and google you error message.

My xorg.conf:


# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously
# in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings
# here are ignored.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

That's all... I can see now why there is a problem... you need to configure your xorg.

Go to this page here on configuring your xorg-server. Then try rebooting and see if the configuration has helped. You need to pay attention to configuring this in your xorg.conf: See if this forum site helps, if not you need to google this error and get example xorg entries and try entering them in your config file

I reconfigured my xorg, but the new configuration looks exactly like the old one. I used the dpkg method; how do others get the really complex xorg.conf files I see when I google?

Thanks for all the advice--sorry this is being obstinate.