@LateAdopter - you're correct. Here:
http://lightofdawn.org/wiki/wiki.cgi/MinimalFatdogBoot.
@belham2: We started the huge/humongous initrd in Fatdog 600, that was back in 2012. The idea is not even new; Barry wrote
Puppy support for humongous initrd back in 2007.
Machines I've previously booted Fatdog on (using USB flash drive)
(I no longer have access to some of them):
- Acer eMachines Netbook (2010): Atom N450 (single-core, 1.6GHz), 1GB - BIOS
- HP desktop (2012): Core i5 (dual-core 3.4 GHz), 8GB - UEFI
- Samsung laptop (2012): AMD A6 (quad-core, 1.6GHz), 8GB - BIOS
- Sony Vaio (2014): Core i5 (dual-core, 2.0Ghz), 16GB - UEFI
- MacMini (2017): Core i5 (dual-core, 2.6GHz), 8GB - UEFI
- Self-assembled desktop (2007): Athlon X2 (dual-core, can't remember GHz, definitely faster than the Atom Netbook), Gigabyte motherboard, 4GB - BIOS
Of all these machines, only the last one has the slowness problem. The rest boots from USB stick in less than 30seconds (from start of bootloader until kernel starts to run). The last one does take over 10 minutes if booted from USB or optical drive; **however** if booted from harddisk, it boots as fast as the others.
So no we're not expecting latest and greatest machine. Machines from 10 years ago is good enough.
... and always laying that at the feet of the user saying "...well, your BIOS (or some other thing) is holding you guys back..."
Unfortunately it is indeed the case. What other explanation could, then, explain why the much-lower-powered Atom netbook can boot Fatdog faster than the Athlon desktop?
As SFR said it, "it's incredible bad luck that **all** your machines have this problem".
@mavrothal:
OK.
Shouldn't /etc/brightness.conf takeover at some point though?
By default this file is empty. /etc/brightness.conf is updated by "brightness-up/brightness-down" (which you can activate using keyboard shortcuts, in sven); and by fatdog-brightness applet.
But for the this settings to be used at boot, you need to call "brightness-set restore" inside /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
Reason why this is not the default? This only makes sense if the machine as machine-adjustable brightness screen (=ie, laptop).
Otherwise looks like that the settings did not stick, which is not a good second impression
Yeah, this is a tough one because of conflicting objectives. What I've done is, if the settings have been set before, it will not be asked again. E.g. if you have set the keyboard map during first boot and then save the session, the first-run wizard which runs on the next boot will not ask about keyboard anymore. At least that's how it is supposed to work.
@bigpup -
The only problem with this.
It looks like the computer is locked up or frozen.
Nothing indicates it is still in the bootup process.
My answer will sound like a cop-out, but it is the truth. The problem of "no indication" is the bootloader problem. Fatdog hasn't even been started at that time, it's the bootloader who's in charge. So there is nothing we can do about it.
Here are some statistics:
- syslinux - prints dots as it loads the file. It does take a ridiculous amount of dots before Fatdog boots (about half a screen I think) but at least you know it's not hanging or something.
- old grub4dos (version 0.4.4 dated 2009) - does not show any indication.
- newer grub4dos (version 0.4.5c dated 2014) - prints the partial loaded size, updated every second
- grub-legacy: I don't know. Never used one.
- grub2 bios: I don't know. Never used one.
- grub2-efi: does not show any indication.
- refind: does not show any indication.
The only saving grace from refind and grub2-efi is that worst-case UEFI-based firmware can usually load it faster (under 30 seconds) than worst-case BIOS.
@All - thanks for test and feedback.
EDIT: Fix typo - Atom is N450 not N270.
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