I have an ACER 4-core personal desktop. Recently the booting process becomes slow and I do not know
why. The computer is still working fine though after booting properly, thanks goodness.

When I first installed CentOS 6.1 on this machine, the booting process from pressing the power button
to firing up the first terminal seemed to take about a minute.

However, the booting process becomes very slow.

Let me summarize where the time go:

(1) From the power button on to selecting which partition (I guess the moment
the boot loader comes to life) to boot up takes 45 sec.
I have no idea why BIOS is so slow ! Some circuit in BIOS is not working properly that
it waits for the faulty components to time out ?

(2) Then it stucks at Logical Volume Management for like 30 seconds. I.e., it takes 30 seconds
for the line LVM to have an OK before proceeding.

(3) Then it stucks at calling sadc for 30 seconds.

(4) After that it goes pretty smooth, and a login screen appears.

(5) After logging in, I have a blue background for about 30 seconds before I see the menu bars.

After that the tool bug window says that gnome-disk-utility and gvfs crashed and ask me
to report.

If I do not logout and relogin, I cannot automount an external hard drive.

So I have logout and login, but luckily this is quick and gnome-disk-utility and gvfs
do not crash.

I do not have this problem before. I just cannot understand why it happens suddenly like this.

I try to boot up other OS on the same machine and the booting process was slower than it
used to be.


I have installed identical CentOS 6.1 on two other machines and they do not have this problem.
So I pretty sure it has nothing to do with the OS but the hard ware.

Any idea how to troubleshoot such problem ?

Thanks.

Switch to runlevel 3 in /etc/inittab and type startx if you want X. Get into lilo/grub and switch off any hidden/quiet switches. Maybe Turn loglevel up (forget how to do this). Do a memory check with memtest86.

Ditto for hard drive. I would suspect difficulty in negotiation with some hardware thing and the bios arguing or not detecting it running through. There's also initng which replaces init and is faster. A bzipped kernel is slower to open than any other.

Any clues in the /var/log/* files?

Might be worth setting the BIOS to default settings and then progressively re-doing any changes you want.

I assume that your harddisk is faulty. Download the manufacturer's diagnosis tool and use it to test the disk.

You can also check your memory, boot to the ubuntu cd and hit any key to show options, then select memory test. Also setting the BIOS to default settings may be a good option as catkin suggested.

Thanks for the responses.

I still thinking about the issues every time I turn on the machine.

I have a theory: I am almost 100% sure that I do not do anything to the Linux OS (no upgrade, no update)
so it is either caused by change in the BIOS setting or the hardware failure. The latter (hardware)
might not be an issue since my machine is relative new so it points to BIOS change.

I am wondering if by booting to Windows-7 occasionally and during its shutdown time it uses the chance to upgrade
stuff including BIOS ?

This in turn interfere/confuse the otherwise perfectly fine Linux OS ?

Key question: Is there a switching to set to default setting in BIOS of my machine ?

Anyway, I will try to do that when I have a chance.

Thanks.

Sounds correct.

Older hardware is more likely to fail. But that doesn't mean that new hardware necessarily has to be in a good state. Even brand new hardware can be faulty. To rule out the hardware there are only two procedures: Test the hardware or test with different hardware of the same type.

Windows will never upgrade your BIOS secretly. It will also never change BIOS settings without your knowledge (except one thing: setting the hardware clock, Linux will do the same).

Yes, just go into the BIOS, load the default settings and save them.From my experience the symptoms you describe point to a faulty harddisk, before changing anything in the BIOS I would test the disk.

Thanks. It is very reassuring to know that Windows 7 update does not touch BIOS setting.

I have no intention to mess with the BIOS. Plus it is a jungle out there, so I am still with the old BIOS that has
not been changed.

I tried to do memtest without downloading iso and burning live cd/dvd. A yum install memtest+ was okay for CentOS 6.1
but then I hit some well-known problem that I have a thread in CentOS forum with centguy ID. That's another story.

Anyway, I guess since memtest is to check RAM and not hard drive so I might not want to get too serious with memtest. Plus
I heard that memtest is very slow (a few hours) so I am not patience enough for that sort of thing.

My friend also suggested the existing
harddrive seems to be the culprit. I am thinking of getting another 3.5 in hard drive and
put the clone system in that drive and boot up from there. I guess if the boot time is short, then I guess that will
conclusively show
that my original hard drive is indeed faulty.

Or I might boot from a thumbdrive and if the booting is fast, then I can ask ACER guy to replace the
drive since it is under warranty. Thumbdrive booting is also cheaper to test since I do not have to invest
on getting a new internal disk.

Oh well, it seems the system is working okay for now and I should plan properly before I break anything.

How nice if there is a command that can be issued on the command line to check the health of a disk. Is there
such command ?

So you would rather buy new hardware for testing instead of just running the manufacturer' diagnosis tool?

Anyways, if you have smartmontools installed you can use to read the SMART data from the first disk.

Trouble is : I do not know how easy it is to download the manufacturer stuff and which OS should
I run the diagnosis. I do not even know which manufacturer it is. Never did that before.

And instead of asking you rather buy things? That sounds strange.

But anyways, you can use the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, it will work with disks from any manufacturer. Just burn it to a CD and boot from it the same way you would do with a Linux Live-CD or install disc.

No. I thought of an excuse for myself to buy something

Thanks for your tips and I should try it out.

I burned the iso to a disk.

When I boot up, I have two choice,
(1) SCSI and ATA only
(2) ATA support only.

Not exactly knowing what to do I chose 1. (I have tried 2 but result is essential the same).

Then it says:

PC DOS 7.0 Startup Menu.
1. For Adapter
2. for LSI 320 Controller
3. for Tekram & Symbios Controllers
4. for ATTO 320 Controller.

Once again I do not know what to do. But I chose 2.


Then under "No Device" it is says

<empty>

I tried a few times and other things, I gave up for now.

PC Dos 7 on a linux forum?

1st menu - choose 2
2nd menu - choose 1

Choose ATA support only, the second menu will not come up in that case. It also may be necessary to disable AHCI in your BIOS for the time of testing.