Ubuntu, etal question regarding slow live disks

[notabug]

My computer is a 2009 era HP m9600m with a first generation iCore 920 2.67 ghz CPU, an Nvidia GT520 GPU, (3rd for this computer), 6 GB of RAM, and a Kingston 120 GB SSD.

Up until a few months ago, live disks for any distro in the Ubuntu family have become slow to reach the Test or Install buttons. Without using a stopwatch, I'm estimating an average 40 minutes. After reaching the desktop and starting the install process, each succeeding step takes an additional 30- 40 minutes until after the partition preparation and personal info has been entered, then the rest of the process is pretty normal. The has been with Ubuntu, Kubuntu and MATE, from 14.04 to the current 16.04. All Mint releases install within 30 minutes. The main stream Ubuntu's used to install in that time frame and they still do on the laptops I have which are Lenovo T200's and T400's. Installs do finish, but it now takes 90 to 120 minutes or more.

Tests with bootable thumb drives are the same.

This computer dual boots with Windows 10, which has always installed quickly. I thought it might have been some problem with the SSD, so I took it back out and plugged the mechanical HDD back in. Installs still took a ridiculous amount of time. The SDD is back in the box.

Would anyone have any ideas why this might be happening? I've searched everywhere using every what to twist the question to try to make it fit.

[jlittle]

On the first slowness, do you mean the try or install menu, that also has a check mdsums option? I've had what may be similar behaviour, but I never waited that long, I've always given up. There was a key to press that would move things along. Pressing any other key would stop the correct key working, as would pressing it too soon. I still have the box (with on-board nVidia similar to a GT500, I think) that had that behaviour, but I've overwritten the USB sticks that had the versions I had trouble with. Those isos would start quickly on more recent hardware (a couple of Acer laptops).

When you get the menu, have you tried "nomodeset"? Press F6 and check the nomodeset entry. That old box wouldn't work without nomodeset, since 12.04 at least. Installing with nomodeset gives VGA resolution, but then installing the nVidia driver would correct that.

Regards, John Little

[notabug]

Thank you John

After reading your reply the first time, I downloaded another copy of the Kubuntu 16.04 ISO. I tested it with sha256sum.exe from a Windows 10 command line and the hash matches the one from the Kubuntu download page. After burning to a DVD at X4 burn speed. From the disk identification, it took only 16 minutes to reach where I can choose to Try or Install from this live DVD. I should have copied what you were saying about nomodeset and pressing F6, but I didn't and I didn't remember your instructions either. So I didn't see if that would have made any difference. I clicked the Try button to continue to the desktop. Once there I exited the live environment. BTW, it took 7 minutes from clicking the Try button to actually landing on the desktop.

I don't know what you mean by there being a key to press to move things along or another key to interrupt things.

I've never had any problem trying to run with the default nouveau video driver, but I usually go ahead and install the Nvidia driver.

This computer doesn't have any problem with LinuxMint flavors of live DVD's nor do OpenSUSE, Fedora or other distros.

I don't know what else to add. Thanks again John.

[elijathegold]

This computer doesn't have any problem with LinuxMint flavors of live DVD's nor do OpenSUSE, Fedora or other distros.

Try pressing ESC while it is booting, this should hide the Plymouth screen show the details of what is happening.

[notabug]

Thanks for the ESC tip elijathegold. The show was interesting even if I don't understand 99% of what I was seeing. Maybe it even cuts a few minutes off the bootup time on the live DVD.

[elijathegold]

Thanks for the ESC tip elijathegold. The show was interesting even if I don't understand 99% of what I was seeing. Maybe it even cuts a few minutes off the bootup time on the live DVD.

Does it take a long time to show one particular message?

[notabug]

What I see after pressing the ESC key is:

[sde] No caching mode page found
[sde] Assi,omg drive cache: write through
stdin: Not a typewriter
[135.591.889] xchi_hdd 0000:03:00.0: ERROR Transfer event for disabled endpoint or incorrect stream ring

the about 20 lines simular to this:

[135.591.1694] xchi_hdd 00000000 06000070 02078001

the numbers vary slightly on each line, but the format is the same

then the boot continues to the selection buttons for Try or Install

I stopped there and exited

[elijathegold]

It seems to be a bug with uas module for usb 3 drives. It can be worked-around by blacklisting the module. To do that you create a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ called blacklist-uas.conf and add the line blacklist uas to it and finally reboot. It probably doesn't matter too much for a live boot; I'm not sure how you would persist the change anyway.