[OpenIndiana-discuss] ~6 minutes to OI banner/boot options in text install

[Chris]

On 2021-01-29 22:24, Toomas Soome via openindiana-discuss wrote:
>> On 30. Jan 2021, at 03:43, Chris <oidev at sunos.info> wrote:
>> 
>> On 2021-01-29 17:18, Andy Fiddaman wrote:
>>> On Fri, 29 Jan 2021, Chris wrote:
>>> ; OK just dragged a Dell Optiplex 790 off the shelf
>>> ; with a 4 core 8 thread i5 CPU in it, and as much RAM
>>> ; as I could jam in it.
>>> ; BIOS:
>>> ; boot UEFI
>>> ; SATA ahci
>>> ; I've tried 2 different Nvidia cards, as well as the
>>> ; intermal video. The results are the same;
>>> ; 2.5 minutes to get to the OI banner/boot options.
>>> ; An additiona 3.5 to draw the OI banner/options screen.
>>> ; It takes ~0.5 seconds to draw each cell. To be clear;
>>> ; I'm not complaining here. Rather, I'm trying to
>>> ; pinpoint WTF is going wrong in hopes of overcoming
>>> ; the problem. I've attempted to put OI on 3 different
>>> ; computers now, and the results have all been
>>> ; underwhelming in the console dept.
>>> ;
>>> ; Any thoughts?
>>> If you can press <escape> really early in the boot process, you get the
>>> first loader prompt (I forget exactly how it looks). At that point,
>>> enter "-t" without the quotes and press return. That will keep in
>>> VGA mode, which might well be faster/usable.
>> Huge thanks for the reply, Andy!
>> Yes, it made a difference. Drawing each cell only takes 0.25
>> seconds. :-P
>> So somewhat faster, anyway. It's funny. It starts out quite
>> fast. The speed I normally experience with other stuff. It
>> writes
>> Available consoles:
>>  text VGA ...
>>  ttya port 0x3f8
>>  ttyb ... not present
>>  ttyc ... not present
>>  ttyd ... not present
>>  null software device
>>  spin software device
>> 
>> Right at this point is where it drops to about 1/2 or slower speed.
>> Then, cell by cell, it prints
>> 
>> console ttyb failed to initialize
>> console ttyc failed to initialize
>> console ttyd failed to initialize
>> 
> 
> 
> This is the point where you have got hint about why this happens. The same 
> defect
> is with virtualbox, when you have configured host pipe for serial device.
> 
> The three lines above tell us that ttya was successfully initialized, so it 
> must
> have to do about ttya.
OK I neglected to note that this was including the advice by Andy to drop to
text mode, by interrupting loader, and entering -t at the prompt followed by
enter. It's clear that it was attempting serial mode -- note the port 0x3f8
Without interrupting loader, text and ttya return:
   text VESA (800x600 - 1600x1200 depending on what I'm hooked up to)
   ttya ... not present

I'm attempting it again via Legacy where
text VESA 1600x1200
ttya ... not present
Choosing 5 (options), followed by 5 (verbose) has already taken 20
minutes (it's still in progress). I think I'm just going to try to
install it and work on it further from the internal disk. In hopes
of getting at least a small speed increase from 0 to actual boot.

I greatly appreciate your insight on this, Toomas.
> 
> If you comment out (I am assuming you have installed OS) the line:
> 
> console="text, ttya, ttyb, ttyc, ttyd”
> 
> from /boot/defaults/loader.conf, you will probably find the console is much 
> better.
> 
> rgds,
> toomas
> 
--Chris
> 
>> Then clears the screen to draw the OI banner, and boot options.
>> Which takes even longer.
>> 
>> Not sure where to look from here. But I really appreciate your
>> chiming in, Andy.
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> --Chris
>> 
>>> Andy
>> 

-- 
~10yrs a FreeBSD maintainer of ~160 ports
~40yrs of UNIX