Hello Linux Gurus:

I have an observation followed by a question about the new Gutsy operating system by Ubuntu. I was using Ubuntu 7.04 on my desktop and laptop but I decided to wipe the drives and upgrade to 7.10 once the automated update feature ruined my old setup...someone should really put some notes out on the internet on how to perform an upgrade with out the video drivers going static on you. Any way....I did a fresh installation of the new new Gutsy OS and now I'm getting a black screen while the system boots-up. It seems like a long time for the system to come up on my desktop system and even longer on the laptop. The laptop is old so I know I can't ask too much of it when it comes to speed but I'm curious if anyone has noticed this and if there is any advice on how to speed up the load time. Any help is appreciated.

Funny, I upgraded from 7.04 to 7.10 via the online network update. Everything worked fine on my HP R3000 laptop. If anything, when I have a long boot time is when fsck runs its' check after every 30 boots. But all is displayed onscreen.

I believe you could set in one of the many config file to display the splash screen of not, It may also be true for the whole boot sequence?

Good luck

Yeah, when Grub menu comes up, select your kernel (if it's not selected already), press 'e' to edit the section, hilight the line that starts with word 'kernel' and press 'e' again to edit it, then replace the word 'splash' with 'nosplash' or if it doesn't exist, write it there between the options. Press Enter to apply changes and 'b' to boot. Now the graphical bootup should be gone and you should see boot messages instead - if this worked, after the machine booted you can make the changes permanent by editing Grub's menu.lst as root:
locating the same kernel line you edited from within Grub, and replacing 'splash' with 'nosplash' there. Save and exit, and you're done.

If there is something making the boot slower, it should be displayed now in the boot messages. If something doesn't look all right, start searching about it in here..

Upgrading trough the package manager is not recommended (by me), but it's supposed to work - at least for the Ubuntu packages. If you have non-Ubuntu packages installed, they might fail. Safest to do it with X closed, with apt-get and some manual editing of the source lists..you can do it from X too, but if the graphics card fights back after reboot, you need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, possibly replace the used driver (Driver line in the section "Device" where your gfx card is mentioned) with "vesa" which is a generic driver, try to start X again, and if it starts, re-run Restricted Drivers Manager (if you've got one of those gfx cards - namely ATI or nVidia - whose drivers you installed from here) or manually reinstall your graphics card drivers.

Note that if X doesn't start after upgrade, don't right away reinstall, but rather hit CTRL+ALT+F1 and see if you can login in text console. If you can, you're set

This worked for me. Thanks everyone. If you have any other suggestions on speeding up boot time I'm always eager to learn.

cool!
that worked for me too. it also boost my boot time.
now i know i have problem with one of my pci device, but that' ok.
thank you!

I think this is a problem when you allow a program to upgrade your system when you have know control over what is being done to it. Blind faith. and apt-get seems to be a faithful thing.

Is there a way to pause the boot sequence so I can write down any loading problems I find?

I guess Ubuntu 710 is a little fat takes awhile to boot sudo dmesg. if your is set up to connect to the internet at boot, then it will take longer especially if you do not have a connection . help files they do not lie.

Make sure your usplash settings are correct also...

xres=1024
yres=768

If they are wrong, change them then run

My Gutsy (and others) have had problems with this and it will cause boot to take up to a minute. You know it's an issue if you do not have the Ubuntu logo during boot and only a black screen.