super slow slackware

[onda_trollet]

Heya!

First off, I am not an experienced linux user, maybe semi-experienced. i kind of run linux every 3rd year or so and it has always been slack...

so for the problem... last time i used linux, it was slack 9. so.... i burned the 6 slack cds and booted for installation. but booting from cd took like 15-20 minutes!!! after that... install was about as quick as i remembered it to be. but i only used 2 of the 6 cds, so whats are the last 4 for?

anyway.... when i boot linux, it always take 10-15 minutes to start up.

any advice on why it is so slow?

i have an acer amd64 laptop.

to clarifiy: i installed slack 12 now and its much slower then slack 9 that i used several years ago.

happy for advice....

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

The additional disks are extra packages, and source code.

It sounds like maybe Slackware doesn't like some part of your hardware. You could try disabling ACPI to see if that helps. Also, try checking the logs for any clues.

[onda_trollet]

heya and thanks

as for the extra cds, i thought so too but was unsure since they were not asked for during install.

also.... i did install debian just for fun and to test something else.... and debian was very fast. super fast as opposed to slack that was super slow.

so.... what is acpi? and how do i disable it? when booting the install cd i just boot without parameters, something there that i should do?

[onda_trollet]

hey again

so... been doing some research on acpi, got a little bit wiser though not much... ;]

anyho... long shot maybe, but i read about the acpid-1.0.4-i486-2.tgz
package thats on one of the cds. thinking that maybe i didnt install it when i installed slack. i will do a new install and try to have that package installed as well (in case it wasnt last time) and see how that works. have to do a new install anyway since i installed debian to see if there was any speed difference (which there were).

cheers!

[oz]

I think you can turn it off by adding acpi=off to the kernel line in LILO. You can take a look in your BIOS for an option to turn it off there, too. I'm not running Slack right now so can't test it on this end.

Take a look around on the disks for some notes about various issues and fixes that might help. I vaguely remember there being some, but don't remember which disk they on, or the name of the file.

Maybe a Slackware user that knows more will chime in with some help.

[onda_trollet]

allright, thanks!!! read that acpi is, among other things, used for reading battery levels and stuff on laptops. seems like a useful thing....

too be honest.... i am having some thoughts about maybe trying arch linux.... seems to be a little like slack, not basing that on anything solid. only reason i am not trying it out is simply that i dont have any more cds to burn on at the mo . i really like slack though.

also (if it helps): this is the main spot it hangs at for several mins when i boot slack (not the installation boot, but the normal boot):
net: registered protocol family 2

some internet issues, i assume?

[oz]

too be honest.... i am having some thoughts about maybe trying arch linux.... seems to be a little like slack, not basing that on anything solid. only reason i am not trying it out is simply that i dont have any more cds to burn on at the mo . i really like slack though.

also (if it helps): this is the main spot it hangs at for several mins when i boot slack (not the installation boot, but the normal boot):
net: registered protocol family 2

some internet issues, i assume?

Yes, Arch is a bit like Slack in some ways. I used to run Slackware before moving to Arch over 3 years ago. The pacman package tool in Arch is really nice.

You could try disabling some features in your BIOS and then reboot to see if the speed changes. If it does, start enabling the things you changed one at a time to see which one caused the problem. At least doing this would give you some idea where to look for the problem.

[Freston]

It's apparent you have a serious problem with your system. This is not normal behavior. It's probably a hardware problem.

Several sources on the net say that you can solve this by passing this to the kernel upon boot:

maxcpus=0

I hope this helps

[onda_trollet]

yeah never had this problem before with earlier versions and older computers, of which one also was a laptop.

so.... i tried passing that at boot. and it got to some minute long halts at complaints about hda: lost interrupt (and some other hda errors that also were new).

not sure what to do. actually considering to give up for a while and try arch instead. but i really would like to use slack instead.

[Freston]

I can imagine. This is not how a machine should behave. Trying your luck with another distro is always a valid option. In fact, I almost always recommend trying different distro's before settling on one. Still, if you're willing to work with Slack for a minute try this:

Boot 'er up without extra parameters. And run the following commands:

dmesg | wc -l # 'l' = small L (short for line); this counts how many lines there are in your kernel log.
dmesg | grep -i acpi
dmesg | grep -i error
dmesg | grep -i bug
dmesg | grep -i cpu
dmesg | grep -i unable
dmesg | grep -i net
dmesg | grep -i bios
dmesg | grep -i not # this one often gives much more useful info than you'd expect ;-)

And any other keywords that you might come up with. And yes, the above is a sorta shot hail. I can't predict what you will hit. But the logs are bound to be filled with errors.

If you find things that are interesting, you can zoom in to get more detail. The way you do that (if you don't know already) is that you pass -C [number] to grep. For example...

dmesg | grep -iC 2 acpi

...gives you two lines of context on each line containing the pattern 'acpi'. And if you want the full experience you do it like this:

dmesg | grep -iC 2 --color=always acpi

Post the output here.


What I suspect is that the kernel thinks you have a multi-core CPU while you don't. But I could be very wrong.