Arch Linux

LeftyAce

Member

Registered: 2012-08-18

Posts: 159

[SOLVED] Booting installer USB is fast, booting /boot from USB is slow

Hi all,

I'm trying to configure my installation with /boot on a USB thumb drive, but the boot process is extremely slow. I think I've eliminated specific USB hardware as the culprit. This is on a new-to-me Thinkpad X220, with the BIOS set to Legacy mode (not UEFI).

Booting the arch linux installer from USB takes about 20 seconds to finish booting and show me a command prompt.

Booting my installation off of the USB takes 1 minute and 5 seconds to show me the tty1 login prompt (I don't have any autologin or any X windows installed yet). The biggest delay is for these two lines, which take around 40 seconds to clear:

loading Linux linux...
loading initial ramdisk...

This behavior occurs across multiple different USB thumb drives. My other laptop (an old x61) is set to boot off of USB as well, and is very fast. I've mixed-and-matched USB drives between the two computers, and the two constants in the slow case are: the x220 laptop, and the fact that it's a fresh install. I can't separate those two things.

My question is this: How is the installer different from the final installation case? Is it possible that the installer is not loading certain drivers, or not probing for certain hardware? I would assume that the installer would be a beefier kernel to handle multiple hardware cases, but maybe not?

Any suggestions much appreciated!

-Lefty

Last edited by LeftyAce (2016-06-11 17:05:55)

Slithery

Administrator

From: Norfolk, UK

Registered: 2013-12-01

Posts: 5,776

Re: [SOLVED] Booting installer USB is fast, booting /boot from USB is slow

Just to confirm, is it only /boot that lives on USB with the rest of the system on an internal drive or does your whole installation live on USB?

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No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

aur - dotfiles

LeftyAce

Member

Registered: 2012-08-18

Posts: 159

Re: [SOLVED] Booting installer USB is fast, booting /boot from USB is slow

Only /boot is on the USB, everything else is on the mSATA SSD.

EDIT:
/boot is on USB
/ is on the SSD
/home is on a conventional HDD.

Last edited by LeftyAce (2016-06-11 16:44:19)

LeftyAce

Member

Registered: 2012-08-18

Posts: 159

Re: [SOLVED] Booting installer USB is fast, booting /boot from USB is slow

Well, I solved the problem. I updated the BIOS to the latest version, and now the time from BIOS to login prompt is 7-15 seconds depending on the USB drive I use. Sorry for cluttering up the forum, it looks like this wasn't an Arch problem at all.