Slow load time to /boot/loader (3rd stage loader)

[J. Kuczewski]

On 10/25/2011 08:15 AM, Vinícius Zavam wrote:
> 2011/10/25 J. Kuczewski<jkuczewski at bnl.gov>:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have recently installed 9.0-RC1 on my Thinkpad X201 and have noticed
>> severe (~20 mins) latency to get to the third stage bootloader
>> (/boot/loader). This is system triple booted with Windows 7 and Arch Linux
>> using the GRUB 2 bootmanager. FreeBSD is not on a extended partition, if it
>> matters. I have tested two BIOS disk configurations, one with AHCI and the
>> other with IDE compatibility mode. IDE mode is comparatively faster, but
>> still slower than expected (~3 mins). To see if this was a regression, I
>> installed 8.2, and it has the same exact effect. Booting off of USB stick
>> loads fine (e.g. the installer). The following is my notes with the
>> different BIOS configurations with a link to the verbose dmesgs for each...
>>
>> With AHCI enabled:
>>     o  dmesg output:
>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45307545/dmesg_logs/dmesg_ahci.log
>>     o  Timeline:
>>         ~05 mins - Loading /boot/default/loader.conf appears.
>>         ~16 mins - /boot/kernel/kernel<args>  displayed.
>>         ~20 mins - Welcome to FreeBSD boot prompt.
>>
>> With IDE compatibility enabled:
>>     o  dmesg output:
>> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45307545/dmesg_logs/dmesg_ide.log
>>     o  Timeline:
>>         ~02 mins - Loading /boot/default/loader.conf and /boot/kernel/kernel
>> <args>  is displayed at once.
>>         ~03 mins - Welcome to FreeBSD boot prompt is displayed.
>>
>> After the boot prompt, startup is normal with no slowdowns to the login
>> prompt.
>>
>> ---
>> Current BIOS and ECP versions (output from Linux):
>> ---
>> # dmidecode -s bios-version
>> 6QET52WW (1.22)
>> # dmidecode -t 11
>> # dmidecode 2.11
>> SMBIOS 2.6 present.
>>
>> Handle 0x0027, DMI type 11, 5 bytes
>> OEM Strings
>>         String 1: IBM ThinkPad Embedded Controller -[6QHT30WW-1.11    ]-
>>
>> ---
>> FreeBSD GRUB2 entry:
>> ---
>> menuentry "FreeBSD 9.0-RC1" {
>>     insmod ufs2
>>     set root=(hd0,3)
>>     chainloader +1
>> }
>>
>> Any guidance to determine the slow down of this loading problem would be
>> great.
>>
>> Thank you for your time...
>>
>> Cheers,
>>     -John Kuczewski
> i've got something like this. check it out:
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2010-January/054551.html
>
> i remembered this issue when reading your e-mail this morning.
> unfortunately i couldn't fix the issue.
> just saw the answer from Paulo[1] today (LOL).. but you, John, are
> using "the same" entry with grub2.. so.... sadness ;-(
>
> nowadays i'm using 10.0current with my asus 1005pe (eeepc) and
> everything runs like a charm. i still have the same pavilion; maybe
> one day it will run freebsd again (even if it needs 30min to boot)<3
>
> [1] http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2010-March/055733.html
>
>
Thanks for the links. I have a spare disk that I'll make just for 
FreeBSD, just to see if this is a partitioning problem with the BTX 
loader, or something BIOS related. Just to note, it doesn't matter if I 
use GRUB2 or FreeBSD's boot manager, both were tested.

Thanks for the idea.

Cheers,
     -John Kuczewski