PC Construction

[Black Hole]

Trying to figure out what the superblock message means, and whether it needs fixing.

Yeah, there's plenty of chatter about that on the web, and seems to be a consequence of (in my case) not fixing up the uuid of the swap partition. Let's see if I can fix it...

 

[bottletop]

I didn't think it necessary - grub.cfg is only three lines long, and cat'ted!

That ( /boot/grub/grub.cfg) file is not 3 lines long. We have a misunderstanding somewhere. The cat'ted file was a different one.

Maybe not that time, but I have seen them since. In common with many SATA mobos these days, RAID support is built in (but I haven't fitted one... yet).

If poss, switch RAID off for now

Trying to figure out what the superblock message means, and whether it needs fixing.

I think we cross post - I edited my last post!

 

[bottletop]

Yeah, there's plenty of chatter about that on the web, and seems to be a consequence of (in my case) not fixing up the uuid of the swap partition. Let's see if I can fix it...

Yes that is likely from what I've read as well. Well spotted. After you fix it - it should boot within 45 seconds!

 

[Black Hole]

Holy sh*t Batman! 14s from mobo "press F2" splash screen to login prompt.

I call that worth staying up for... night night.

 

[Black Hole]

We have a misunderstanding somewhere. The cat'ted file was a different one.

Oh yeah, sorry... failed to recognise that the path is different (hardly matters now).

If poss, switch RAID off for now

It's as switched off as it can be. The RAID option is not selected in the UEFI BIOS*.

* Regardless of whether AdamW likes the term, that's what American Megatrends Inc (the suppliers of firmware boot code to mobo makers) call it on their boot setup screen. I think they ought to know!

there is a newer BIOS Version 5406 dated 2020/04/21

Bloody hell, only a few days ago! I bought this 2½ yeas ago - what are the chances? Diligent of you to look it up.

OCZ Vector - looks like an old SSD

Sorry about that - I can't work out where it came from or when now, but it will have been bought around the same time with the budgetary constraints of "best bang for buck".

maybe make sure you install smart tools monitoring sudo apt-get install smartmontools gsmartcontro

Is that a typo?

maybe go back and check HDD boot up speed

Yeah, it will be interesting to make the same corrections to the HDD installation and see how long that takes to boot (but the config has been left behind now).

 

[Black Hole]

As suspected.
In turn:
Both A and B connected = Boots to A
Only B connected = Boots to B (as suspected it would)
Both A and B connected = Boots to B (last boot drive)
Only A connected = Boots to A
So. I'll just leave B disconnected until either I need it or for cloning onto purposes and not bother trying to establish the innermost workings of UEFI

I have a possible solution for you: install a minimal Linux alongside everything else, which will take over the boot process with a GRUB (Grand Unified Bootloader) intermediary. I used to use XOSL as a boot manager, but I suspect that only works with MBR. Then you can customise the GRUB boot menu to boot your Windows installations (in fact, the Linux install process might well set that up for you, if you have them accessible at the time). You don't need to boot Linux itself, just use GRUB to offer a boot menu and a default option after a time-out.

That's how I think I might force my system to boot from optical (if there's a disk present), rather than having to do it through mobo boot settings every time.

Grub Customizer - GUI to customize GRUB/BRUG for Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and elementary OS

Grub Customizer is a free utility that gives you an easily customizable user interface for managing GRUB entries. Using this utility, you can move, remove or rename the GRUB entries. You can even edit the GRUB entries and the greatness of this utility is it keeps the entries updatable if…

www.fosslinux.com

 

[Black Hole]

How stupid is an OS which says "the UUID I've been told to expect is incorrect, but everything else is OK so I'll carry on... but only after a long delay to annoy people" rather than "I don't care about the UUID", or "the UUID is incorrect - the system may have been compromised, I'll abort with an error message"?

 

[bottletop]

Holy sh*t Batman! 14s from mobo "press F2" splash screen to login prompt.
...

That's great news. Maybe live with the system as it is for now to see how stable it is.

Is that a typo?

Yes, sorry it should be sudo apt-get install smartmontools gsmartcontrol
I suggested it in case there was an issue with the SSD, but it's not urgent now, but useful.

Regarding XOSL - I'm not sure how well that'll work - it might overwrite or cause issues with GRUB.
The reason why you have the issue is because the cloning process you used didn't clone the UUID over.
You tried to correct it by duplicating the UUID for one of your partitions but didn't do it for all.
Duplicating UUID may cause issues later - it all depends on what you wish to do (eg if you wish to have both the SSD and HDD connected and powered on, unless you change UUID for the HDD or reformat HDD, etc )
There is usually an option in the BIOS to allow hybrid booting for BIOS/EFI. Eg

• UEFI/Legacy boot - set to both,
• UEFI/Legacy Boot prority [Legacy first]
• CSM Support [Yes]

Then you'll need to adjust the boot order accordingly

 

[Black Hole]

Regarding XOSL - I'm not sure how well that'll work - it might overwrite or cause issues with GRUB.

I have no intention - that was an aside.

The reason why you have the issue is because the cloning process you used didn't clone the UUID over.
You tried to correct it by duplicating the UUID for one of your partitions but didn't do it for all.

I know! But the OS masked the problem by booting anyway (stupid).

Duplicating UUID may cause issues later

It won't - the HDD will (eventually) be repurposed.

PS: thanks for the moral support and pointers. If nothing else it's helpful to have somebody to bounce off.

 

[MikeSh]

Sorry about that - I can't work out where it came from or when now, but it will have been bought around the same time with the budgetary constraints of "best bang for buck".

I think I may have sold that to you a couple of years ago. It had been in a Windows PC for a few years at that point. Probably about 5-6 years old now.

 

[Black Hole]

Oh yes, May 2018, thanks for the nudge. My memory is like a black hole, I rely on email search for historical data (but this was in Conversations, so...).

 

[prpr]

Is that a typo?

Just press Tab.

 

[prpr]

Operating System: Linux Mint 18.2

18.2 ?
Have you not updated anything?

 

[Black Hole]

I haven't looked into Linux updates yet, beyond apt-get upgrade. Another fight for another day.

I will go "latest" though, at some point, but then not expect to change it again - I can't stand getting used to how to work something and then have it all changed. It's not good for productivity (and it's time OS people realised that instead of chasing the latest fashion of "look and feel"). Remember Metro? The ribbon is terrible too: how can you explain to unsophisticated "users" what menu to find a particular tool on when the menus change with context?? Stupidity.

 

[Black Hole]

Well I'm buggered. Setting out to investigate the USB port expander problem, I reconnected the USB3 ports thinking they would have nothing to do with it (it's just a wire from the twin-USB3 mobo connector to a pair of sockets) and sure enough the boot time remained fast. No sign of trouble in dmesg, 14.36 seconds to boot (according to the log). I moved the wired keyboard and wireless mouse to the front-panel USB3 ports (talk about under-utilisation!) and everything worked fine.

So then I reconnected the USB2 subsystem to the mobo, expecting the boot time to return to 2+ minutes. It didn't. I moved the keyboard and mouse to USB2 sockets, it still didn't. dmesg shows none of the USB resets that were happening before.

Nothing has changed in between (apart from editing fstab). The only thing I can think of is that the mobo connector wasn't seated properly, and yet the front panel sockets and card reader were working (my guess is that the four USB2's are on one mobo USB2 port, and the card reader is on the other - the mobo port hosts two USB2 connections). It seems an outside chance that the dicky fstab would induce USB problems, I guess the only way to find out is to corrupt it again.

I'm happy, with reservations (I don't like mysteries, and I was about to open a support ticket for the front panel port unit).

 

[Black Hole]

LOL! The slowest thing on my system at the moment (ignoring the broadband) is waking the mouse up!

9 seconds from power button to mobo "beep"​

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4 seconds for "press F2" screen to appear and disappear (fast boot enabled, minimum POST delay without making it zero)​

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14 seconds to login prompt.​

​

Less than 30 seconds from cold start to login. Beat that Windows! (This mouse is beginning to annoy me though...)

 

[prpr]

Less than 30 seconds from cold start to login. Beat that Windows!

The last Windows PC I built (not for me, and it's about 4 years ago now and nothing special hardware-wise either) did it in about 21 with W7. It's about the same with W10.

 

[Black Hole]

I know mine is loaded down - I have loads of fonts for a start.

 

[EEPhil]

But how many fonts do you actually need? (No, I don't know either. My PC also has loads of fonts. Most are never used)

 

[MikeSh]

But how many fonts do you actually need?

Two as a rule.

But once in a blue moon you want something special and spend ages going through all the 200 ones you have to find the right one.
And there isn't one