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RE: why boot using floppy is very slow?



I got the same latency w/ the floppy boot disk created from initial
install.  i'm using a w2k <--work laptop & woody dual boot and 'load
linux' takes about 2mins (forever) on a p3700.  I'll probably go back to
lilo though the lilo mbr I had from potato got 'upgraded' and 'hosed' my
mbr-- lots of l01's across the screen.  I grabbed a 98 boot disk and
fdisk /mbr so I could get back to work; then; later tried to run lilo
config again and again following the lilo walkthrough without success.
I don't however know what kind of boot disk it is; probably the kernel
image. justin

-----Original Message-----
From: Karsten M. Self [mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 2:32 AM
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: why boot using floppy is very slow?

on Mon, Feb 25, 2002, debianlist (debianlist@hotmail.com) wrote:
>     I boot my DEbian 2.2R4 using floppy,but the process is very
>     slow..at least much slower than other linux distr...how can i
>     improve the speed based on boot by floopy...(there is no hardware
>     problem) i have a 2.2r4 boot floppy,,can i boot 2.2r5?

What type of boot floppies are you comparing?

There are several distinct types of boot floppy:

  - A LILO MBR on floppy pointing to a kernel and root partition on hard
    disk.  This will boot nearly as fast as an HR LILO configuration.
    Other boot methods may be used, e.g.:  syslinux, LOADLIN.EXE.

  - A kernel image.  This loads a kernel image from floppy but (usually)
    mounts a hard drive.

  - A rescue disk, usually with a kernel and/or minimal root filesystem,
    e.g.:  Tom's Root Boot.

Floppy access is *slow*.  If you're reading significant data from disk,
be prepared to wait  20 seconds to a minute.  My boot kernel is 578 KiB
on disk, about 40% the capacity of a floppy, a good chunk of data.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>    http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?       There is no K5 cabal
  http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/         http://www.kuro5hin.org




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