there is a problem and it is related to the speed of the CPU and/or the
type of floppy controller in the system (I don't know which). If you boot
from a floppy on a <200 MHz system it boots fine, an a >300 MHz system it
can take 5-10 min to read the image off of the floppy before it starts to
compress it.
I have seen this while using the same floppy on systems ranging from
486/25 to PIII/550 but not on all systems (toshiba laptops seem to be
reasonably fast but many desktops dead slow) I have seen this on a wide
variaty of systems from dell, compaq, toshiba, and a variaty of clones
using different motherboards) I origionally put it down to a new bug in
lilo (thinking it was hitting every system) until I recently updated some
old P-75 and 486 systems to run linux and noticed how fast they booted in
comparison.
it acts as if the system is only reading a singly sector(or block) per
revolution of the floppy on the fast systems, but on the slow systems it
is able to read the whole thing quickly.
both fast and slow systems have the same performance when accessing the
floppy at all times other then the lilo boot process (and for that matter
it is only when reading the boot image, reading the root filesystem from
floppy is fast)
David Lang
On Fri, 11 Feb
2000, Richard Adams wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Jim Jarosz wrote:
> > I have linux installed on a WIN95 machine and I boot
> > with a boot disk. I have set up the boot disk to
> > use LILO. It works, but loading the kernel off the
> > floppy takes minutes, literally.
>
> There should be no differenace appart from the defined timeout in
> /etc/lilo.conf.
> It should take the same amount of time to uncompress the image on
> both a boot floppy created with dd in your case, as booting from a
> lilo floppy, the only differance is, the time is measured from the
> time you hit enter on the lilo floppy. Or the files are not the same.
>
> If there is a big differance and the files are the same, it could be
> that one floopy is on the virge of going corrupt.
>
> > One day I used 'dd' to transfer a copy of the kernel
> > onto another floppy without LILO and the kernel
> > transfers off the floppy in about 30 to 40 seconds.
> >
> > Would someone be kind enough to explain what makes
> > such a difference? Did I make a mistake with the
> > LILO disk or is this to be expected?
> >
> > TIA,
> >
> > Jim
> >
> > --
> > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> > "Sweet praise is like perfume," said 34th U.S. President
> > Dwight D. Eisenhower. "It is fine if you don't swallow it."
> > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> >
> >
> > -
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> --
> Regards Richard
> pa3gcu@zeelandnet.nl
> http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/
>
> -
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