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Re: GRUB really slow to boot

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On Sat 18 Dec 2021 at 11:08:37 (-0500), Greg Wooledge wrote:
> Today I rebooted my machine for the first time in quite a while, after
> the kernel update that was released along with Debian 11.2.

Mine's a new installation. I've run buster from an external drive
for a while, but have recently installed bullseye on its SSD.

> When it reached the GRUB screen, I pressed Enter, and nothing happened
> as far as I could see.  I was initially worried that it had stopped
> seeing my USB keyboard (a thing that I've experienced with GRUB and
> certain USB slots on certain machines in the past).  This keyboard
> plugged into this same USB slot had worked in previous versions of GRUB
> on this machine, though.

Mine's a laptop: HP Spectre x360 Convertable 15-bl012dx.

> The next thing I observed was that after 5 seconds, it still hadn't
> booted, nor had the coundown ("will automatically boot in 5s" or whatever)
> advanced.  It appeared to be hung.

Snap. It's happened maybe three or four times (one gets no record,
of course.)

> I waited a bit longer, and the 5s changed to 4s.  It just took a really
> long time (like 15+ seconds for each second on the timer).

I'm afraid I just assumed it was permanently hung when Enter did
nothing, so I just force-powered off and started over.

> Eventually, after a minute or two, the system booted.  Everything is
> working normally now, post-GRUB.
> 
> Has anyone experienced this, or does anyone have ideas about how to
> prevent it happening again?  I am not interested in trial and error
> for this, because it's far too annoying and disruptive.  But if there
> are well-known ideas about things I could try (e.g. "grub 2.04 is known
> to have bugs on Intel motherboards, revert to 2.03") then I'm game.

I haven't really looked. (I've been sort of off the grid over Christmas.)

> I Googled it, and the only hits I found were for people reporting slow
> interactivity with GRUB on high-resolution displays.  I don't think my
> monitor is high resolution, and this has NEVER been a problem on ANY
> previous boot, with this same computer and monitor.  I have not changed
> any hardware.  Only software versions.  (Of course, I can't rule out
> hardware going bad.)

This laptop does have a very high resolution: 3840x2160, which
means using a magnifying glass. I started by typing
  setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/Lat15-TerminusBold32x16.psf.gz
blind, then sticking Xscale="0.5" Yscale="0.5" in .xsession,
but lastly, after editing the Grub screen to add video=960x540
and finding that that fixed everything, I just added
  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="video=960x540"
to /etc/default/grub, and removed the scaling.

When it first stalled, I had just installed bullseye, and I only
had /boot/efi/EFI/debian, so I booted the installer's rescue,
and reinstalled Grub with the removable device path (whatever
that means), which wrote /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT.

However, stalling has reoccurred just a couple of times since then.
I just assumed the EFI might be slightly flaky. The laptop has a
few faults (which is why I've inherited it), like poor socketry
all round (HDMI, USB3, USB-C x 2), non-functional trackpad "buttons",
and somewhat unreliable keys.

Cheers,
David.

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Thread

GRUB really slow to boot Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-12-18 17:10 +0100
  Re: GRUB really slow to boot James Dutton <james.dutton@gmail.com> - 2021-12-18 23:30 +0100
    Re: GRUB really slow to boot Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-12-18 23:40 +0100
      Re: GRUB really slow to boot James Dutton <james.dutton@gmail.com> - 2021-12-19 00:50 +0100
        Re: GRUB really slow to boot Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-12-19 01:00 +0100
          Re: GRUB really slow to boot James Dutton <james.dutton@gmail.com> - 2021-12-19 14:00 +0100
            Re: GRUB really slow to boot Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-12-19 15:20 +0100
          Re: GRUB really slow to boot Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2021-12-19 15:20 +0100
            Re: GRUB really slow to boot Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-12-19 15:30 +0100
              Re: GRUB really slow to boot James Dutton <james.dutton@gmail.com> - 2021-12-19 15:40 +0100
      Re: GRUB really slow to boot Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2021-12-19 04:10 +0100
  Re: GRUB really slow to boot Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2021-12-19 00:10 +0100
    Re: GRUB really slow to boot Tim Woodall <debianuser@woodall.me.uk> - 2021-12-19 08:30 +0100
      Re: GRUB really slow to boot Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-12-19 15:30 +0100
        Re: GRUB really slow to boot Tim Woodall <debianuser@woodall.me.uk> - 2021-12-19 16:10 +0100
  Re: GRUB really slow to boot Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2021-12-19 13:10 +0100
  Re: GRUB really slow to boot Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> - 2021-12-19 15:50 +0100
  Re: GRUB really slow to boot David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-01-03 03:50 +0100
    Re: GRUB really slow to boot David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-01-20 17:30 +0100

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