> On 7. Feb 2021, at 09:04, Chris <oi...@sunos.info> wrote: > > On 2021-02-06 13:36, Chris wrote: >> On 2021-02-06 00:56, Toomas Soome wrote: >>>> On 6. Feb 2021, at 01:41, Chris <oi...@sunos.info> wrote: >>>> On 2021-02-05 14:16, Chris wrote: >>>>> On 2021-02-05 13:46, Toomas Soome wrote: >>>>>>> On 5. Feb 2021, at 19:54, Chris <oi...@sunos.info> wrote: >>>>>>> On 2021-01-30 02:28, Toomas Soome wrote: >>>>>>>>> On 30. Jan 2021, at 10:39, Chris <oi...@sunos.info> wrote: >>>>>>>>> On 2021-01-30 00:03, Toomas Soome wrote: >>>>>>>>>>> On 30. Jan 2021, at 09:40, Chris <oi...@sunos.info> wrote: >>>>>>>>>>> On 2021-01-29 22:24, Toomas Soome via openindiana-discuss wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>>> On 30. Jan 2021, at 03:43, Chris <oi...@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. >>>>>>>>>> Ok, so this guess was not good one afterall. If you are doing CD >>>>>>>>>> (ISO) boot, you >>>>>>>>>> will get loader started as first stage - that is, there is no way to >>>>>>>>>> enter >>>>>>>>>> options; however, once you get out of menu and on O prompt, you can >>>>>>>>>> enter: >>>>>>>>>> framebuffer off >>>>>>>>>> on BIOS boot, this will switch to VGA text mode, on UEFI, it will >>>>>>>>>> switch terminal >>>>>>>>>> draw from GOP Blt() to SimpleTextOutput protocol (gfx can not be >>>>>>>>>> switched off as >>>>>>>>>> there is no VGA text mode in UEFI, there may not be even VGA). >>>>>>>>>> If you are booting from USB stick, press space on very first spinner >>>>>>>>>> to get boot: >>>>>>>>>> prompt, from there you can enter: -t as Andy was suggesting, it will >>>>>>>>>> start loader >>>>>>>>>> in text mode, without switching to VBE framebuffer. Once the OS is >>>>>>>>>> installed, you >>>>>>>>>> can create /boot/config with -t in it, this will achieve the same >>>>>>>>>> effect. >>>>>>>>>> That much about workaround. >>>>>>>>>> “normally”, if drawing in FB mode is slow, it will help to use lower >>>>>>>>>> resolution >>>>>>>>>> and/or depth, but as you wrote, 800x600 was just as bad as >>>>>>>>>> 1920x1200, it means >>>>>>>>>> something else is going on there. >>>>>>>>>> You can set mode as: framebuffer set XxY[xD], where D is for depth, >>>>>>>>>> defaults to >>>>>>>>>> 32, if not present. framebuffer list [depth] will list available >>>>>>>>>> modes. With BIOS >>>>>>>>>> mode, you can also try something like 640x400 or 640x480, below that >>>>>>>>>> the terminal >>>>>>>>>> will get too weird even with 6x12 font... >>>>>>>>>> If depth 8 or 15/16 does not make it faster, it still means there is >>>>>>>>>> something >>>>>>>>>> weird going on, and at this point, I’d suggest to check if there is >>>>>>>>>> firmware >>>>>>>>>> update from vendor. (tbh, firmware update would be good as first >>>>>>>>>> check, the hw >>>>>>>>>> vendors are known to produce a lot of bad things, especially if it >>>>>>>>>> comes to have >>>>>>>>>> bios emulation with uefi csm.). >>>>>>>>> Sure. Good point. But already updated it. You've given me some things >>>>>>>>> to poke at. >>>>>>>>> I'll give them a try, and see if anything interesting develops. >>>>>>>>> Thank you very much for taking the time, Toomas. Greatly appreciated! >>>>>>>> Well, I wrote that stuff;) >>>>>>> You seemed like a nice person. It's a pity I have to hate you now for >>>>>>> doing that. ;-) >>>>>>> Seriously tho. After some 5 days now poking at this, and only getting >>>>>>> marginal >>>>>>> improvements via different framebuffer settings (BTW how does one make a >>>>>>> framebuffer setting stick from boot to boot?). >>>>>> add framebuffer set … to /boot/loader.rc.local >>>>> Thank you. I think you may have already told me that too. Sorry. >>>>> But TBH, the differences are negligible. So I think my time is probably >>>>> better spent tracking down the cause. :-) >>>>>>> It occurred to me that I didn't recall having any of these problems on >>>>>>> earlier >>>>>>> SunOS/Solaris, or Illumos/OI installs. So I decided to walk back in >>>>>>> history, >>>>>>> and see if I could discover where the problem left/started. So, always >>>>>>> choosing >>>>>>> text install images, I went from OI-hipster-text-20201031.usb, to >>>>>>> OI-hipster-text-20200504.usb, to OI-hipster-text-20191106.usb, and >>>>>>> BINGO! >>>>>>> Everything worked perfectly. The time to the boot options menu/banner >>>>>>> was >>>>>>> *instantaneous*. So I figured I'd simply walk the commits going forward >>>>>>> to >>>>>>> discover what introduced the slow screen writes. >>>>>> hm, that is interesting finding. >>>>>>> On OI-hipster-text-20201031.usb: >>>>>>> % time ls --color=force -Cla /usr/include/ >>>>>>> took 22.4s >>>>>>> On OI-hipster-text-20191106.usb: >>>>>>> % time ls --color=force -Cla /usr/include/ >>>>>>> 0.000u 8.270s 0:08.28 99.8% >>>>>>> That's 3 times faster! >>>>>>> Finding that many of the tools I need weren't available because I needed >>>>>>> to bootstrap a newer version of pkg. I did the unthinkable, and issued >>>>>>> pkg update -v >>>>>>> Which of course required a reboot into the new environment. The results >>>>>>> of the new environment was unrewarding. Getting to the boot options >>>>>>> menu/banner screen took nearly 9 minutes. Now I'm back to square 0. :-( >>>>>>> Altho illumos-3c2328bf3b: >>>>>>> % time ls --color=force -Cla /usr/include/ >>>>>>> 0.008u 8.999s 0:09.11 98.6% >>>>>>> Which is *technically* slower. The difference is negligible for sure. >>>>>> That's just two samples, you need more to draw conclusions:) >>>>> I only _post_ 2 samples. I must have towards 50. But they were >>>>> close enough to simply pick the first in these 2 installs. :-) >>>>>>> But the fonts don't seem as smooth. In all cases the EDID was read >>>>>>> correctly (1920x1200 @32bpp). OH and if it matters, it's on an Intel >>>>>>> chipset (Intel video). >>>>>>> Time to (re)install OI-hipster-text-20191106.usb and start over. >>>>>>> Any thoughts? Best places to look? I'd love to shorten the timeline >>>>>>> to a (correctly) working install of OI. 7 days and counting. >>>>>> Is it BIOS or UEFI setup? if bios, then all you need is to copy >>>>>> /boot/loader from >>>>>> older BE (beadm mount OLD /mnt; cp, then beadm umount). Just in case, >>>>>> make copy of >>>>>> existing one. >>>>> Thanks! Good idea. I could probably choose the previous env from the >>>>> loader, >>>>> and mark it default. >>>>>> But, there are few things to keep in mind. >>>>>> loader and kernel console draw are different things, the ls itself got >>>>>> some fixes recently. >>>>>> So, is the performance degradation actually hitting only loader? >>>>>> Can you please mail me output from: tr '\0' '\n' < >>>>>> /system/boot/environment >>>>> Will do. >>>>> Thanks for taking the time to reply, Toomas! :-) >>>> OK we have a winner! Thanks to some advice from Toomas: >>>> adding: console=text to /boot/conf.d/console >>>> which I later moved to /boot/loader.conf.local (console="text") >>>> followed by commenting the console= line from /boot/default/loader.conf >>>> I now have speed to boot menu that is close to the >>>> OI-hipster-text-20191106.usb install I mentioned earlier in this thread. >>>> While the screen still isn't as fast as the other some half dozen OSs >>>> I use. It's not so slow I can't work with it. :-) >>>> So a HUGE thanks go out to everyone here on the list, that chimed in >>>> to help out -- THANK YOU! :-) >>>> @moderator >>>> Please mark this solved. ;-) >>> The issue is still up, we do need better way to pick up serial config (ACPI >>> SPCR); >>> but workaround is good to have. >>> Note, you do not need to have console=text in config if you have commented >>> out the >>> /boot/defaults/loader.conf line; however, defaults will be replaced by next >>> update. >> Well commenting the line in /boot/default/loader.conf seemed to prevent it >> from >> polling for other possibilities. Of course I could be wrong. I'll check to >> confirm. > CONFIRMED > adding console="text" to /boot/loader.conf.local does NOT negate the > ttya,ttyb,ttyc or ttyd entires in /boot/default/loader.conf if left > UNcommented. > > What's the magic incantation? :-)
When the interpreter is starting, we read in and process the following config files and in listed order: /boot/solaris/bootenv.rc # managed by eeprom command /boot/defaults/loader.conf # defaults from pkg /boot/loader.conf # if present, distribution defaults from pkg /boot/loader.conf.local # user settings, if present /boot/conf.d/* # user settings by snippets /boot/transient.conf # one time settings created by reboot command, automatically removed on boot. This means that anything you set in later file (like in /boot/conf.d/somefile), can override previous setting. However, for console, as there may be some output while processing each file, “bad” setting in /boot/defaults/loader.conf can cause issues till replaced in later file. rgds, toomas _______________________________________________ openindiana-discuss mailing list openindiana-discuss@openindiana.org https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
