Slow booting (Dell Vostro 3700)

[johnrose]

I have a Dell Vostro 3700 portable with dual boot Ubuntu 10.04 and XP Professional under grub2.

XP always boots correctly, but Ubuntu boot shows the following behaviour about half the time (other half it boots correctly):
* After selection of Ubuntu in the grub2 choices (which always come up correctly) it goes to a blank screen with cursor blinking at upper left and hard drive reading (same as in normal boot).
* Then, instead of booting normally in about 10 seconds, it stays with blank screen for 30 seconds or more - drive LED is out but WiFi and bluetooth LEDs are on, and finally boots.
* A small percentage of the time (1-2%?) the computer does not boot at all but is blocked with two LEDS (shift lock and numlock I think) flashing.

I have a single hard drive working under AHCI.

I tend to believe that it may be a videocard problem as was thought in the posting "slow booting after install" since this machine has two video cards: an Intel HD and nVidia Geforce. There is some sort of switching mechanism which Dell has programmed to use the Geforce card with mains power and the Intel card with battery. This does NOT work with my XP which recognizes only Intel HD, since Dell has written switchable drivers for only Vista and Windows 7, and it is my guess that Ubuntu would also only recognize Intel HD..

I have the output suggested by MikeTbob in the above-mentioned posting (file of about 1MB). Looking forward to any advice, thanks, John

[johnrose]

Hello, I just tried to send the output as a message but it did not seem to go through. I can't easily find out what CODE tags are or how to send an attachment, could someone direct me to the editing instructions? Thanks, John

[oz]

I can't easily find out what CODE tags are or how to send an attachment, could someone direct me to the editing instructions?

Hello and welcome!

You can read about using bbcode such as code tags here:

BB Code List - Linux Forums

If you should need it, more about how the forums work here:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...-user-faq.html

[johnrose]

Thanks ozar, attached are is the information returned by the commands suggested by MikeTbob, hope that someone can advise, John messages.tar.gz

[snowweb]

Are you connecting to your network via wifi by any chance? I often notice on other machines that if the wifi (or wired network) fails, then it can delay the boot process by about 10 minutes. Try connecting using a cable and see if that helps?

[johnrose]

Thanks for this, snowweb.

WiFi is not a factor. When I connect by cable instead of WiFi the results are the same:

1. “normal” boot of about 15 seconds less than half of the time (during the boot there is I/O on the hard drive and blinking cursor at upper left of slightly lighted screen).
2. delayed boot more than half of the time (there is an additional annoying delay of about 45 seconds – screen is completely dark with no cursor, WiFi and blue-tooth LEDs on but very little if any hard drive I/O).

There have been different hardware versions of the Dell Vostro 3700 which are not distinguished by name or model number. My machine (the standard version delivered in most markets since mid-2010) has an integrated Intel Media Accelerator HD video card and a nVidia Geforce 330M card; these are connected with the nVidia "Optimus" hardware technology which is supposed to use the Intel card on battery and the nVidia card on main power. The web is full of frustrations of Linux users who cannot access the nVidia card on their computers, apparently because neither Dell nor nVidia has provided the software support for access to both cards under Linux. Thus my Ubuntu is using only the Intel HD video card.

The Dell Vostro 3700 was certified by Ubuntu but specifically mentioning Ubuntu 10.10 (I have 10.04) and the Intel HD card only. Unfortunately it is not clear whether the Vostro tested was the original version with discrete access to the nVidia card or the more recent one (like mine) with switched access.

In response to the post “slow booting after install" last February (similar problem to mine, but Dell Inspiron instead of Vostro and 10 minutes boot wait instead of 45 seconds), MikeTbob thought it was a probably a video card problems and asked for four terminal command outputs (lspci, dmesg, Xorg log and system messages /var/log/messages). Taking up from there I attached the system messages in my follow-up posting (I thought I had done all for, could still post the others).

The system messages seem to confirm that it is a video card problem:

Boot + 1 sec: ALSA hda_intel.c:1420: Codec #1 probe error; disabling it...

Boot + 48 secs:
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 22.090458] ALSA hda_intel.c:1420: Codec #2 probe error; disabling it...
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 23.502836] ALSA hda_intel.c:1420: Codec #3 probe error; disabling it...
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 24.915198] ALSA hda_intel.c:1420: Codec #4 probe error; disabling it...
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 26.327581] ALSA hda_intel.c:1420: Codec #5 probe error; disabling it...
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 27.739944] ALSA hda_intel.c:1420: Codec #6 probe error; disabling it...
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 29.152314] ALSA hda_intel.c:1420: Codec #7 probe error; disabling it...
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 30.564818] __ratelimit: 9 callbacks suppressed
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 30.565281] HDA Intel 0000:01:00.1: PCI INT A disabled
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 60.499253] ALSA hda_intel.c:712: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode: last cmd=0x00af0700
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 68.855199] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:00:02.0,olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=io+mem
Jul 30 08:28:25 JOHN-PC kernel: [** 68.855201] vgaarb: transferring owner from PCI:0000:00:02.0 to PCI:0000:01:00.0

I am not sure whether the above Intel HD recognition problem is related to the Optimus technology (and thus perhaps not be readily solvable), or could perhaps be fixed by standard configuration for the Intel HD card. It would be great if someone could tell me how to try to improve the configuration so that I do not have to start from basics on this?

Thanks and best regards, John

[johnrose]

Hello,
This is apparently not a video card problem but rather a sound card problem.
When I added probe_mask=-1,0x2a to the line in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf making it:

options snd-hda-intel model=dell probe_mask=-1,0x2a

,
I get the following behaviour:
1. "normal" boots less than half the time as before"
2. the 45 second delay for delayed boots reduced to about 20 seconds (only 3 of the 7 probe codec errors).
Best regards, John

[johnrose]

Solved, if I use probe_mask=-1,0x0 [default handling of the integrated Intel sound card, probe no codecs for the discrete nVidia sound card (which I guess is part of the nVidia video card), I get normal boots apparently all of the time.

Best regards,John