How to make the default/install Slackware memory stick boot faster?
 

I have the default Slackware install memory stick "burned" onto several memory sticks, but I almost never end up using them - as they are extremely slow to load. Specifically the copying of hugesmp and initrd.img takes a long time. In my tests, using a few different laptops and desktops and different memory sticks, I get the following results:

hugesmp - 10s-50s
initrd.img - 57s-5min!

The above times are before the actual booting process starts.

On the same machines, booting off an optical disc is so much faster - with the initial copying of the above two files always taking a matter of a few seconds. Even when I plug an external optical drive into the same usb ports and boot off it, it still loads several times faster than off the memory stick.

Is there anything that can be done to boot off the standard memory stick image faster?

xj25vm --

Not an expert, but I do occasionally boot a USB Stick on a Zotac ZBox to run a transmission torrent Server and I havn't noticed long boot times.

I do have a couple Qs ...

Q1: Why an initrd when you're running hugesmp ?

Q2: if you're running lilo, have you tried unpounding the compact line in /etc/lilo.conf ?

HTH ...

-- kjh

As per my original message, I'm not referring to booting off a usb flash drive in general - I'm referring to the usb images shipped with Slackware in the "usb-and-pxe-installers" directory. They are images, they are already built - all you do is just dd them to a usb flash drive. No option to reconfigure things. I would like to use them instead of the Slackware DVD, when installing new machines or troubleshooting things. But their slow boot times (sometimes very slow) detracts from their usefulness.

Dooh !

I completely missed that subtlety.

And now that you mention it, when installing to an older laptop from a USB thumb drive a couple weeks ago, it did seem slow to boot.

Sorry about the noise.

-- kjh

Have you tried just writing the entire iso to the usb drive? It's what I've done for the past several years (which led me to remove my dvd drives from my desktop as that was the only thing I was using them for) and I don't remember any slowness on booting them. The iso images starting with 14.1 are already prepped for usb, so there's no need to run isohybrid on it like some online guides might suggest. You just need to dd it onto the device. (NOTE: make sure you select the correct device as this will destroy any data on it)

I saw one or two machines that spent too much time reading kernel and initrd.img from installation media.
But I don't remember details about m/b or BIOSes.

Apparently it is a BIOS issue:
Check the bios release dates and compare to fast USB booters out there :/

I had even a BIOS that refused to "see" a non floppy-emulation USB thumbdrive.

Verify times:
Boot off an Optical medium and install the "full" system
Boot off an USB storage and install the "full" system
Boot off an Optical medium but point the install to pull packages form USB storage

My guess:
You'll find out the USB is faster than Optic (even SATA ones) yet boots painstakingly slow on said motherboards?

I think floppy emulation could speed this up

and/or maybe the plop boot manager as the initial booter?

I had a similar problem years ago. See thread http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...sb-4175483766/

It's probably not applicable anymore as so much time has elapsed!

What does the syslinux -s switch do?

According to the syslinux manual

If the -s option is there take it out and see if that speeds things up.

Hmm - I've just created an ISO image of -current using Alien Bob's script (http://www.slackware.com/~alien/tool...are-current.sh) and dd'ed to a memory stick - but I can't boot from it. Does anybody know if the iso images made by Alien Bob's script are different from the standard ones?

I think they are?

Before the dd you might have to do an isohybrid on the iso.

You need to either run the script with the -u option (see quote below) or run isohybrid on the iso after the script is done.

Thank you for that. Indeed, after re-running the script with -u and dd'ing the resulting iso image to the usb flash drive, it is bootable.

I can confirm that writing the iso directly to the memory stick with dd fixes the problem. I've re-tested on the same machines, using the same usb flash drives. Most machines are now loading bzimage and initrd almost instantly - or in a matter of seconds at worst. Only one machine is still slow (but faster than before - 1.5 minutes for initrd, instead of 5 minutes) - but this is an old machine - with either usb 1.1 onboard, or a buggy BIOS.

Somehow it seems that the usb image bundled in the usb-and-pxe-installers directory uses a different booting method than the iso. Thank you for the tip! Maybe this post will be seen by one of the Slackware bigwigs - and the usb images will be modified to boot equally fast.