LinuxMusicians

Anyone using LM 18.3 or 19 ? After changing the default kernel for the low-latency one provided by the distro, something that I always did in the past years, the distro takes an incredible long time to boot. Minutes. I've started to read here and there about this problem and it seems many people are experimenting this. And there are many, many different things being said. Some even say that you should update your hardware. Which is something that would totally go against one of the arch-proven goals of Linux: to run easily on any older hardware.

Once the system has booted, task and process execution is seemingly as usual though from what I can tell.

I'm currently using LM 18 which does not have this problem. I've installed 18.3 as double boot with the prospect of moving all audio production there, but reverted back to 18 for the time being.

The fact that at Linux Mint the guys cannot help and went on delivering LM 19 that has the same problem is also quite disturbing.

So I'm asking here in parallel to further reading about this, if anyone is using LM and if so, did you solve this problem ?

Cheers.

If you use the journal you can see the boot messages of the latest boot with
This should tell you which process takes long.

Also, run and and post the results here.

I'm not sure I can be of much help here, but just out of interest, which kernel are you running and how did you install it? To tell you which kernel: I'm running Linux Mint 19.1 with this kernel "4.15.0-43-lowlatency #46-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Thu Dec 6 17:28:08 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux" installed via this command: If we're running the same LL kernel, I can try running some other ones to compare boot times to get an idea if it's a kernel problem or just something with your setup.

OK. Got it. Thanks for your replies. Sometimes one just need to put the question put there to unblock things.

As for the very exact cause, I do not know. There is a failing drive in the machine (fails from time to time). Recently I bought another one, and moved data around. But the failing drive is still connected. And currently partitions off it can be mounted although none are mounted in fstab.

Looking at the log file the gap is clear:
This is about the time I saw using a chronometer. I listed the UUIDs (ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid) which was not useful since the device was of course not there due to the time out problem, so I looked into fstab and saw those generated lines:
The second entry is the culprit, so I commented it out. And it rebooted quickly.

There's one swap partition left in fstab. Swap space mechanism is not something I've looked into much. Swap space is needed so I always had one when building Linux systems. Never had multiple swap spaces.

So now there are two points left.

1) Once the sys 2 31.5GB 52.4GB 21.0GB primary linux-swap(v1)
tem has quickly rebooted with only one swap space in fstab, parted will report the following:

On sda:
11 1783GB 1793GB 10.5GB logical linux-swap(v1)

On sdd:
2 31.5GB 52.4GB 21.0GB primary linux-swap(v1)

And so there are two swap spaces nevertheless mounted. I do not mind learning about the swap space mechanism in detail. It seems to be a parallel system of sorts where one swap space is indicated in fstab and others are mounted on the fly. The swap space on sdd is actually on the failing drive that currently works OK.

And 2) I still have to identify where that faulty swap space lies. At the previous boot parted has flagged a partition with '[SWAP]' instead of 'linux-swap(v1)' which could be a faulty swap spae although I'd swear the UUID did not correspond with what dev-disk-by has reported in the time out. I'll have to verify again by perhaps re-enabling that fstab entry.

Ah, so much fun ! Seriously, it's OK to learn aspects of the OS. It's actually interesting because it's Linux and it's possible to really get all the technical details if one wants to spend the time.

Note: About the low-latency kernel, I will check out later on today. At the moment the following is installed (dpkg -l) :
Although 'uname -a' reports:
Cheers.

Booting Linux Mint 18.3 (and 18 before) takes 5+ minutes. Kernel loads within 5 sec. networking.service step takes 5+ minutes. I use WiFi to connect, no wired connection. Please, help resolve.