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Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

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TW8
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Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#1 Post by TW8 »

This is my first post and sorry to say I've come begging bowl in hand. I have been running Debian 8 on a Tranquil PC SQA-5H for several years without problem but decided it was *well* overdue an OS update so I installed Debian 11 as a fresh install.
The Tranquil is an old machine with an old BIOS :
Sil 3124 SATALink BIOS version 6.6.00 by Silicon Image Inc
Atom 330 (2×1.6GHz) Dual Core processor
Slow by modern standards but still good enough to function as a backup device.

Booting from Debian 8 takes 1m47s :
00s Power on
10s BIOS message
20s GRUB select menu
22s Loading Linux 3.16.0-11-amd64
23s Loading initial RAMDISK
47s .. and it starts load systemd stuff after that, ready to go about a minute after.

When i first tried Deb 11 it took 17 minutes to boot, but I followed the instructions I found here :
https://www.linuxquestions.org/question ... 175658085/
to reduce the size of initrd.img-5.10.0-18-amd64. That brought boot time down to 8m30s with a reduction in file size from 45Mb to 15Mb :

0m00s Power on
0m10s BIOS message
0m15s Grub loading / Welcome to GRUB!
0m57s Blank screen
1m05s GRUB select menu splash
1m18s Splash + Loading Linux 5.10.0-18-amd64
3m12s Splash + Loading initial RAMDISK
7m30s then it starts to load system file and takes around a minute

As you see, the majority of the time is shared between loading GRUB, the Linux image and RAMDISK so I presume (perhaps wrongly) this is something to to with BIOS?

If anyone has any ideas for me to try to reduce the boot time, I'd be grateful to know your thoughts. Could I install an older GRUB perhaps? Maybe reinstall as as 32 bit? I used the multi-arch net install.

For I've reverted to using Debian 8, but Bullseye seems to work faster but only once it loads!

Many thanks for reading.

Best wishes.

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sunrat
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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#2 Post by sunrat »

Use journalctl to check the system logs for errors or warnings. To see what processes are taking all the time, run:

Code: Select all

systemd-analyze blame
Obviously as you say it's an old, slow machine but should be fine for backups. As a last resort, if it's not connected to the internet, you could just restore the image of Debian 8 you made before the attempted upgrade. Debian 8 is well past end-of-life so should not be anywhere near the internet (or any networks really) due to security concerns.
“ computer users can be divided into 2 categories:
Those who have lost data
...and those who have not lost data YET ”
Remember to BACKUP!

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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#3 Post by TW8 »

Hi Sunrat,

Thank you for your reply. Unfortuanately no logging takes place for around 7 minutes. 'systemd-analyze blame' seems to start aproximately 6m50 after power up and shows no noticable delay taking 75 seconds to complete. Plymouth-Quit-Wait.service expectedly takes the longest at 30 seconds. I believe the major delay happens before this point. BIOS, GRUB, Linux image and RAMDISK? I started the machine at 12:56, the first syslog entry not until 13:03:50.

Perhaps I should closely compare config-3.16.0-11-amd64 with config-5.10.0-18-amd64 and see if anything enabled in 3.16 that is disabled in 5.10. I have noticed that CONFIG_EFI_VARS=m in 3.16 and # CONFIG_EFI_VARS is not set on 5.10. Hmmm.

Thanks again for your suggestion.

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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#4 Post by p.H »

IMO the issue is between the BIOS and GRUB. GRUB uses BIOS drivers for I/O (display, keyboard, disk). If BIOS disk reads are slow, loading GRUB files, the kernel image and the initramfs takes a long time. Once the Linux kernel takes over, it uses its own drivers for I/O. Of course Debian 11 files are bigger than Debian 8 files, so it takes longer to load them.
Did you install Debian 8 and Debian 11 on the same disk ?
What do you mean by "splash" ?
Yes, installing an older GRUB is worth a try.

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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#5 Post by TW8 »

Hi p.H,

Debian 8 and 11 are installed on different drives as I wanted to ensure I could revert to 8 should something fatal happen. By splash I mean the graphical Debian background image rather than text on a black screen.

Thanks for your thoughts on GRUB. Your explanation about the read speed difference does make the most sense to me at the moment. I'm taking it as a positive that 8 GRUB loads quickly so I'm currently installing Debian 9 on a third drive. I've messed up though. First off I'm installing the i386 version, secondly I forget to uncheck 'utils' from the install menu so it taking ages! After that install has finished (if it ever does), I will install Debian 10 amd64 on a fourth drive ( should have started with 10 really ).

As I've read of other people with starting with Deb11 had their beasts hanging at the point of RAMDISK (though maybe if they left it a lot longer it might eventually have booted), but I'm hopful Deb 10 may boot in a reasonable time.

Regarding using an older version of GRUB2, I'm not sure how to do this yet. I have a little light reading to do! Well, what else is there to do on a Friday night ;)

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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#6 Post by p.H »

If you can have both disks connected, you can boot Debian 11 from Debian 8 GRUB and conversely. Just run update-grub on each system to add the other in its GRUB menu.
This way you will see whether the slowness is related to the version of GRUB or the disk.

T1 = Debian 8 GRUB -> Debian 8
T2 = Debian 8 GRUB -> Debian 11
T3 = Debian 11 GRUB -> Debian 8
T4 = Debian 11 GRUB -> Debian 11

If T1 << T2 and T3 << T4 then the disk is the culprit.
If T1 << T3 and T2 << T4 then GRUB is the culprit.

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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#7 Post by TW8 »

That is wonderful advice. Thank you again! I had no idea GRUB would boot from partitions from other physical drives. I've already updated GRUB today in order to remove 'quiet' from the mount but it showed no extra info until after RAMDISK had been initiated. Points to slow loading as you said previously.

So far I have avoided putting both drives in at boot time, but it will have to wait until tomorrow as Deb 9 is still installing after 4 hours and only 2/3rds through. It's started so I'll let it finish. Looks like my nightly backup will be delayed. Ho humm! By comparison, Deb 11 took two hours to install with utils.

I guess it will be pot luck which drive loads its GRUB on boot... unless it gives a choice? The sda sdb disk allocation seems pot luck at any rate. I will find out tomorrow and let you know how it goes.

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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#8 Post by p.H »

The BIOS should have a boot menu allowing to select either disk.

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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#9 Post by TW8 »

Update:

Debian 9 i386 install completed around 1:15 am but besides checking it booted quickly (which it did) I abandoned it and installed Debian 10 AMD64. Debian 10 also booted quickly. 2m04s from power on to log in screen which is only 15 seconds longer than Debian 8. Not bad for a beast from the middle ages that looks like a toaster! Since the first boot I've reduced the size of 'initrd.img-4.19.0-22-amd64' using instruction I mentioned in my first post, and boot time now clocks in at 1m35s.

Following p.H's idea I booted both Deb10 and Deb11 first from their native GRUB and then from the alien GRUB. The GRUB on Deb11 really is painful taking up 42 seconds just to load itself! The GRUB on 10 loaded and was gone in less than a second. I'm going by how long "GRUB loading / Welcome to GRUB" was displayed on the screen before it moved on to the next step.

Besides that initial 41 second difference, whatever GRUB was used made no noticable time difference to the OS loading time. The only difference being that the Kernel and RAMDISK messages were absent when loading the alien OS in both cases. So in the case of loading Deb 11 from the GRUB of 10, I was looking at an empty Debian splash screen for 7 minutes. Some none the wiser might have thought the system had hung.

Without the aid of any logs (as the delay happens before logging starts), I can't research the reason nor think of anything else to try. Nor would I expect developers to be interested in an issue that only effects old kit. Therefore I've decided to replace Debian 8 with Debian 10 as Buster will be supported until at least 2024. I've given up on Debian 11 for now but I'm still open to ideas If anyone can think of any. I will also keep 11 on a flash drive and boot it occasionally when I've got a spare hour. Maybe an upgrade further down the line might fix it but I'm not holding my breath on that one. I do wonder if this is Debian specific or something to do with Linux 5? "Linus what have you done!" ;)

Thanks for your support and suggestions. I like ruling everything out that I can before giving up. Some you win...

Best wishes.

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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#10 Post by p.H »

If I understand correctly:
- loading either GRUB or the kernel+initramfs from the drive Debian 11 is installed on is slow
- loading either GRUB or the kernel+initramfs from the drives Debian 8 and 10 are installed on is fast
regardless of which GRUB loads the kernel+initramfs.

So the drive Debian 11 is installed on is likely the culprit with the BIOS complicity, and Debian 11 and its GRUB are innocent.
Install Debian 11 on another drive and do not use that one for booting on this machine.

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Re: Debian 11 Bullseye 8m30 secs to boot up (old BIOS)

#11 Post by TW8 »

Hi p.H,

Your thinking is sound so thought your idea was well worth a go. I installed Debian 11 on the same brand and model of flash drive I installed Debian 9 on. It took absolutely ages to load Deb 9 on this drive, so I wasn't too surprised when it took 7h30 to install Debian 11 on it (started 11:15 this morning). Yeah, I know the write speed of this drive is too slow for an OS, but as it was only to test the boot speed (for which I had a benchmark for and 9 loads quickly from that drive model).

Result : Sadly it took exactly the same time to get past the GRUB and kernel message as on the original drive. While it was 15m02s before the initramfs message disappeared that was no longer than the original drive took before I reduced the size of initrd.

Thanks for suggesting this, it has ruled something else out.

I might dig out an old SATA drive at some stage to rule out USB. Or maybe I'll just stick to Deb 10 ;)

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