LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Question about boot process

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Question about boot process

I have Slackware 13.1 installed on 2 laptops and a desktop. The desktop is an older Dell XPS 410 with 4 gigs of ram and a 2.8gHz dual core pentium D, One laptop is a Sony Vaio with a dual core processor and 2 gigs of ram, and the other is a Dell Studio 15 with 3 gigs of ram (can't recall the processor).

Anyway, the desktop hits the loading linux and flies straight away to the rest of the boot. The two laptops go rather slowly after loading linux with the dots popping up much slower than the laptop. Then they his Bios check successful and the rest of the boot is similar to the desktop.

I am wondering what may be the reason for the slower run through the loading linux to Bios check successful. Everything runs just wonderfully and I am very pleased with Slackware. Right now I use KDE on all.

I did the mkinitrd on the desktop and the Vaio.There is no change on the Vaio. I used the generic smp kernel (could this have been wrong). I used the script to generate the mkinitrd command.

I am just curious where I might look next to speed up the boot if possible. You know how it is... I noticed the difference in boot speed and just gotta play with it ;)

Adding the "compact" option to /etc/lilo.conf will eliminate this step.

man lilo.conf

Code:

      compact

              Tries  to  merge  read requests for adjacent sectors into a single read request. This drastically reduces load time and keeps

              the map file smaller. Using `compact' is especially recommended when booting using a map file on a floppy disk.

See the top of my /etc/lilo.conf file ... add the line for compact.
Any changes made to that file require you to run "lilo" as root to
write them to LiLO.

Code:

# LILO configuration file

# generated by 'liloconfig'

#

# Start LILO global section

boot= /dev/sda

lba32

#default = Slackware64

compact        # faster, but won't work on all systems.

<snip>

Thanks Bruce, that was just the ticket!! I also noticed the lba32 line...made that warning go away too (it showed up when I ran lilo).

Glad that fixed your problem. Please mark your thread as [SOLVED] ... I think it's the Thread Tools button above.