Painfully slow installation of Linux
Hi all,
<WARNING> Totally new to Linux, be gentle pls. :) </WARNING>
I'm installing Linux and the first part of the installation is painfully slow:
So far, I have tried with:
- Mandrake Linux 9.1
- Mandrake Linux 10
- Fedora Core 2
- Fedora Core 3
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
- Red Hat Linux 9
- CentOS 4
They all behave roughly the same:
Boot from the CD, everything seems normal until a message reads "loading /sbin/loader" it stays there for about 10 minutes. (Doing what?)
Then it starts enumerating the hardware:
- video Card .... wait 5 minutes
- monitor .... 10 minutes
- mouse ....
if running graphical install 15 to 20 minutes, in text mode about 10 minutes
then it starts asking questions about the installation with the following pauses:
QUESTION GRAPHICAL INSTALL TEXT INSTALL
- Language? 10 minutes 8 minutes
- Keyboard? 8 minutes 6 minutes
and so on... From boot to the point it starts formatting the drives: 1 to 2 hours. After that it goes much faster, format, copy, post-install config about 10 minutes all.
As a reference, Install Windows XP from boot to finish: 35 minutes. (including Service Pack 2 and updated drivers)
Hardware info:
MOTHERBOARD:
Product name Intel(R) Desktop Board D865GLC based system
Board model Genuine Intel(R) D865GLC system board
PROCESSOR:
Processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
Bus speed 800 MHz
L1 cache Data Cache 8KB, Execution Trace Cache 12K Micro-ops
L2 cache Advanced Transfer Cache 512 KB
Form factor Socket 478
Stepping 9
SYSTEM:
Physical memory 1,024 MB RAM
Memory speed DDR320
Memory type DDR, Synchronous
Form factor DIMM
BIOS date 03/07/2005
BIOS size 512 KB
BIOS version P24 (BF86510A.86A.0075.P24.050
HDD:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA
Model Number:ST3120026AS
Capacity:120 GB
Speed:7200 rpm
Seek time:8.5 ms avg
Interface:SATA 1.5Gb/s
VIDEO CARD:
nVidia GeForce FX 5200
128 MB DDR
AGP 8X
NOTE: Install finishes without errors. Once installed it is not that bad. (Windows XP seems to run a bit faster, but it may be a matter of perception)
If it's already installed, why do I worry? you may rightfully ask,,, The thing is I'm gonna be installing several diferent distributions and configurations of linux in several
computers with exactly the same hw config, and at over 2 hours each, it's going to take way too long for all the tests I need to do. Specially taking into account that format- copy-config only takes 10 ~15 minutes.
Booting from rescue disk or similar... 35 to 45 minutes a pop.
Also tried other distributions that failed to complete for reasons I don't have time to solve, so those are already scratched from my list:
- Slackware
- Debian
- Lycoris
If you read this far, thanks in advance for any help....
<WARNING> Totally new to Linux, be gentle pls. :) </WARNING>
I'm installing Linux and the first part of the installation is painfully slow:
So far, I have tried with:
- Mandrake Linux 9.1
- Mandrake Linux 10
- Fedora Core 2
- Fedora Core 3
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
- Red Hat Linux 9
- CentOS 4
They all behave roughly the same:
Boot from the CD, everything seems normal until a message reads "loading /sbin/loader" it stays there for about 10 minutes. (Doing what?)
Then it starts enumerating the hardware:
- video Card .... wait 5 minutes
- monitor .... 10 minutes
- mouse ....
if running graphical install 15 to 20 minutes, in text mode about 10 minutes
then it starts asking questions about the installation with the following pauses:
QUESTION GRAPHICAL INSTALL TEXT INSTALL
- Language? 10 minutes 8 minutes
- Keyboard? 8 minutes 6 minutes
and so on... From boot to the point it starts formatting the drives: 1 to 2 hours. After that it goes much faster, format, copy, post-install config about 10 minutes all.
As a reference, Install Windows XP from boot to finish: 35 minutes. (including Service Pack 2 and updated drivers)
Hardware info:
MOTHERBOARD:
Product name Intel(R) Desktop Board D865GLC based system
Board model Genuine Intel(R) D865GLC system board
PROCESSOR:
Processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
Bus speed 800 MHz
L1 cache Data Cache 8KB, Execution Trace Cache 12K Micro-ops
L2 cache Advanced Transfer Cache 512 KB
Form factor Socket 478
Stepping 9
SYSTEM:
Physical memory 1,024 MB RAM
Memory speed DDR320
Memory type DDR, Synchronous
Form factor DIMM
BIOS date 03/07/2005
BIOS size 512 KB
BIOS version P24 (BF86510A.86A.0075.P24.050
HDD:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA
Model Number:ST3120026AS
Capacity:120 GB
Speed:7200 rpm
Seek time:8.5 ms avg
Interface:SATA 1.5Gb/s
VIDEO CARD:
nVidia GeForce FX 5200
128 MB DDR
AGP 8X
NOTE: Install finishes without errors. Once installed it is not that bad. (Windows XP seems to run a bit faster, but it may be a matter of perception)
If it's already installed, why do I worry? you may rightfully ask,,, The thing is I'm gonna be installing several diferent distributions and configurations of linux in several
computers with exactly the same hw config, and at over 2 hours each, it's going to take way too long for all the tests I need to do. Specially taking into account that format- copy-config only takes 10 ~15 minutes.
Booting from rescue disk or similar... 35 to 45 minutes a pop.
Also tried other distributions that failed to complete for reasons I don't have time to solve, so those are already scratched from my list:
- Slackware
- Debian
- Lycoris
If you read this far, thanks in advance for any help....
if you're going to be doing a series of installs on similar hardware, you may also want to look into automated installs -- redhat does this and I believe other distros do as well (google for "redhat kickstart") -- all you need is a network-accessible location that you can put all the install media on (your own FTP or NFS server, for e.g.,) and then point it that way....SuSE also supports this and I would be surprised if other rpm-based distros (mandrake in your case,) didn't.
ASKER
I know I could do one install and create disk images, but we'll be testing different configurations, different packages, different kernels, etc. So disk images are not an option, as per automation of the install process (asuming it works something like Windows answer files & setup manager?), I don't thnk that would help since the phase that is taking too long would be roughly the same... am I missing something?
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
Found the culprit!.
It was my UPS. Disconnecting the USB monitoring port did the trick. Installation is now down to about 40 minutes. Depending on packages selected. First phase of install (up to formatting) is about 3 minutes (from 2 hours... Hypersupercalifragilistics
I really don't care about UPS monitoring right now, so I'll leave that darn thing disconnected until I get the time to play with it.
dpiniella's last post gave me the tip, although not exactly pinpointed it, and Wesly_chen's although not exactly the point of the question will help my ultimate goal: (easier, faster installations). So I'll spli the points. Hope you don't mind.
Thanks a lot for your quick responses.
It was my UPS. Disconnecting the USB monitoring port did the trick. Installation is now down to about 40 minutes. Depending on packages selected. First phase of install (up to formatting) is about 3 minutes (from 2 hours... Hypersupercalifragilistics
I really don't care about UPS monitoring right now, so I'll leave that darn thing disconnected until I get the time to play with it.
dpiniella's last post gave me the tip, although not exactly pinpointed it, and Wesly_chen's although not exactly the point of the question will help my ultimate goal: (easier, faster installations). So I'll spli the points. Hope you don't mind.
Thanks a lot for your quick responses.
linux noapic
or
linux26 noapic
you can probably press f1 to get the list of commands for your distro. Use the commands which turn off apic or apm. You should also see other things that you can turn off during booting. Maybe you need to experiment a bit.