slow boot. waiting or ata2 ??
 

Hya,

Symptom:
It takes a while to boot. Following power on, lilo message and many "."'s show up, then four penguin logos and need to wait for a while then normal boot process.

System:
Debian squeeze, Intel Atom 510, motherboard D510MO
Hard drive (root) is connected via sata.


So far:
Following several messages, (also playing around with lilo options) it looks like that boot process is waiting for ata2 time out, which is connected to nothing. (ata1 detects existing hard drive)
I tried to change root drive connector (the other sata connector), which changed nothing.
I have not tried to connect something to that sata port, (I have nothing else :)

Question:
Is my assumption correct?
Is there anything I can do to speed up boot precess?

I will appreciate any comments.

Happy Penguins!

enable boot logging and post the log.

Also tweak the automatically started services

Hya,

Thank you for prompt reply.

However, boot log shows no trouble. It looks like problem happens before init process.

I also need to excuse insufficient information in my previous post.

The reason I say it looks like to wait time out for sata2 is:
after sata1 messages with success,
sata2 message shows up, then wait for several 10's seconds,
then loading.... normal boot process.

Any information will be appreciated.

Happy Penguins!

I have a very similar problem on my P45 motherboard.

When I set it to use true sata in the bios, instead of IDE emulation, it takes quite a while for each installed disk to be configured. The disks are detected quickly but then the bios goes into what seems like a wait, detects the next disk and waits again.

I'm guessing that what is happening is that the bios is checking the capability of the drives and/or its smart data.

That said, I cant for the life of me believe that it takes so long to get a few bits of data from a disk drive to ascertain its sata speed :-/

Self reply

I connected another drive to open ata connector today.

Symptom does not change, (waiting for a whiiiiiiile, after detecting two ata drives.)

So it does not seem to waiting for ata time out.

Happy Penguins!

Self reply

This symptom is gone with current kernel (custom compiled.)

Happy Penguins!