| Summary: | grub2 boot panel has extremely slow response | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | Mageia | Reporter: | Frank Griffin <ftg> |
| Component: | RPM Packages | Assignee: | Barry Jackson <zen25000> |
| Status: | RESOLVED FIXED | QA Contact: | |
| Severity: | normal | ||
| Priority: | Normal | CC: | marja11, zen25000 |
| Version: | Cauldron | ||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
| Source RPM: | grub2 | CVE: | |
| Status comment: | |||
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Description
Frank Griffin
2017-04-25 18:37:41 CEST
Details of hardware would be a help. I have an old pIII (800MHz & 382MB) machine which will not handle grub2 graphical. See how it behaves after commenting out the "theme" line in /etc/default/grub followed by update-grub2. CC:
(none) =>
zen25000 I'll try the test as soon as I can get the machine again for testing. However, this is a fairly new HP 64-bit machine which does hi-res graphics just fine. And the grub2-graphical works, it just reacts very very slowly. I'd be interested to know if anyone else is seeing this. That's strange - I have queried this on #grub irc, but no useful responses yet.
Marja Van Waes
2017-04-26 13:26:59 CEST
Assignee:
bugsquad =>
zen25000 Frank, is this UEFI or PC-BIOS? The machine has both, but it's booting PC-BIOS. There are two root partitions, one older cauldron and one installed a few days ago. The new one owns the MBR. Normally, the older one is used. When rebooting the new one to try the test, the behavior had changed. Now the text on the screen paints very quickly compared to the last time, although it still paints character by character, but the response to the arrow keys was still just as slow. I commented out the theme, did update-grub2, and rebooted. Now the boot screen is decidedly more text-like, and everything reacts to the keyboard instantly. One thing I notice with the theme is that every time I press an arrow key all of the displayed selections repaint, character by character. The video is an Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display (per harddrake2). Keywords:
NEEDINFO =>
(none) Frank, Jordan upstream says: "<Jordan_U> barjac: To preface: I know very little about grub's video code, and it's almost certainly better to ask Andrei or Vladimir what they would have the user test. That said, I'm curious if the problem is reporoduceable when booting via UEFI. If it would make it easier for Frank I can work with you to create a disk image with Mageia's theme that will only boot via UEFI and that they can dd to a flash drive to test with rather than changing their main installation." Would that be OK for you? The new partition isn't in use yet, so we can play with it as needed. Also, I can easily boot with UEFI but it doesn't look anything like the PC-BIOS theme screen. Still, I can try it and see how responsive the keyboard is there. We can also try the flash drive if you like. Update: I have another laptop which was installed in mid-March, so even though it updates from cauldron every day, the grub2 install would have been from mid-March. I rebooted, and did not see this behavior. Then I did an update-grub2, which I assume rebuilds the grub2 code from the currently installed package, rebooted again, and still did not see this behavior. So it seems to be specific to the other machine. This second machine has an Intel Device 5916 graphics chip. The only other difference I can think of is that the second machine has only one installed partition, and the first has two; this causes the second machine boot screen to have only two lines - Mageia and Advanced Options for Mageia, while the first machine has two installed partitions and the Advanced line is expanded to show several options. The next test I can think of on the first machine (when I can get it again) is to boot the older partition and do an update-grub2 using its relatively backlevelled software to recapture the MBR and direct it to the older grub2/theme to see if the behavior changes with the older code. Just to clarify. When you say "the machine has both" do you mean that "the hardware supports both but neither of the installed systems were installed in UEFI mode"? (In reply to Barry Jackson from comment #9) > Just to clarify. > When you say "the machine has both" do you mean that "the hardware supports > both but neither of the installed systems were installed in UEFI mode"? Exactly. Did you manage any more testing with this? You could try booting into a Mga6 install iso (stick or disk) with the machine in UEFI mode to see how the grub2 menu on there behaves for comparison. Be sure to use a very recent iso as the early ones did not boot into a graphical menu. I recently noticed some sluggishness in the boot menu of my laptop which has only Cauldron installed. On checking I found there were 32 kernels installed! I removed 30 and now the menu is back to normal with no lag. So, it would be worth checking all installations (in a multi-boot set-up) for unneeded kernels which bloat the boot menu. I haven't seen this for quite a while. And I also have a system with lots of kernels that doesn't exhibit this (although dkms during boot takes its sweet time), so I' going to call this fixed. Resolution:
(none) =>
FIXED |