[syslinux] [Bug]: Extlinux needs 1 minute before boot menu is shown

[Gene Cumm]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 06:13, Martin Stolpe
<berti.boeller at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> when I try to boot from my computer extlinux needs about one minute before the
> boot menu is shown. Here's my system configuration
> -Two IDE drives on one controller
> -Second hdd is boot hdd
> -I'm using Arch Linux (i686)

1) What version of the Syslinux package are you using?  Are you using
the official version?  Have you tried this with the latest official
version (4.02; which should be ready to go from the tar/zip file)?

> Is there an official bug tracker which I can use? I only found the debian bug
> tracker and I can't find any information about bugs on the homepage.
>
> Here is my extlinux.conf:
>  DEFAULT vesamenu.c32
>  PROMPT 0
>  MENU TITLE Arch Linux
>  MENU BACKGROUND splash.png
>  TIMEOUT 50

2) You should use the UI directive for vesamenu.c32.  This allows you
to set a different default for the menu (unless overridden with MENU
DEFAULT).

3) Have you tried without vesamenu.c32 or your background?  It's
possible that disk I/O, VESA initialization and/or decoding of
splash.png is extremely slow.  I'd suspect one of these is the
culprit.

>  MENU WIDTH 78
>  MENU MARGIN 4
>  MENU ROWS 5
>  MENU VSHIFT 10
>  MENU TIMEOUTROW 13
>  MENU TABMSGROW 11
>  MENU CMDLINEROW 11
>  MENU HELPMSGROW 16
>  MENU HELPMSGENDROW 29
>
>  # Refer to http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/Doc/menu
>
>  MENU COLOR border       30;44   #40ffffff #a0000000 std
>  MENU COLOR title        1;36;44 #9033ccff #a0000000 std
>  MENU COLOR sel          7;37;40 #e0ffffff #20ffffff all
>  MENU COLOR unsel        37;44   #50ffffff #a0000000 std
>  MENU COLOR help         37;40   #c0ffffff #a0000000 std
>  MENU COLOR timeout_msg  37;40   #80ffffff #00000000 std
>  MENU COLOR timeout      1;37;40 #c0ffffff #00000000 std
>  MENU COLOR msg07        37;40   #90ffffff #a0000000 std
>  MENU COLOR tabmsg       31;40   #30ffffff #00000000 std
>
>  LABEL arch
>    MENU LABEL Boot Arch Linux (i686)
>    KERNEL vmlinuz26
>    APPEND initrd=kernel26.img root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0ff4c04f-c05c-4662-
> b648-06f05b0ead32 ro resume=swap:/dev/disk/by-
> uuid/73ab1690-3e03-4385-80d1-7c05f507c509
>
>  LABEL arch_custom
>    MENU LABEL Boot Arch Linux (custom kernel)
>    KERNEL vmlinuz26-kms
>    APPEND initrd=kernel26-kms.img root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0ff4c04f-c05c-4662-
> b648-06f05b0ead32 ro resume=swap:/dev/disk/by-
> uuid/73ab1690-3e03-4385-80d1-7c05f507c509
>
>  LABEL windows
>    MENU LABEL Windows
>    KERNEL chain.c32
>    APPEND hd1 2
>
>  # http://www.memtest.org/
>  LABEL memtest
>    MENU LABEL Run Memtest86+ (RAM test)
>    KERNEL memtest86+/memtest.bin
>
>  LABEL reboot
>    MENU LABEL Reboot
>    KERNEL reboot.c32
>
>  ONTIMEOUT arch_custom

Nice, clean and unique labels.  That's always a good sign.  "# " for
comments.  Also nice.  I would also assume that it's just email
wrapping the above lines (and each append is really only 1 long line
in the config file).

> Output from sfdisk -l:
>  Disk /dev/sdb: 30515 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
>  Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0
>
>     Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
>  /dev/sdb1          0+  21927   21928- 176136628+   7  HPFS/NTFS
>  /dev/sdb2   *  21928   21950      23     184747+  83  Linux (ext2)
>  /dev/sdb3      21951   30514    8564   68790330   83  Linux (ext3)
>  /dev/sdb4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
>
>  Disk /dev/sda: 7297 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
>  Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0
>
>     Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
>  /dev/sda1   *      0+   2330    2331-  18723726    7  HPFS/NTFS
>  /dev/sda2       2331+   6982    4652-  37367188    7  HPFS/NTFS
>                start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,0,5)
>  /dev/sda3       6983    7284     302    2425815   82  Linux swap / Solaris
>  /dev/sda4       7285    7296      12      96390   83  Linux

-- 
-Gene