On Mon, 2018-09-03 at 16:21:36 +0200, Steffen Grunewald wrote: > On Mon, 2018-09-03 at 15:43:47 +0200, Thomas Lange wrote: > > >>>>> On Mon, 3 Sep 2018 15:34:34 +0200, Steffen Grunewald > > >>>>> <steffen.grunew...@aei.mpg.de> said: > > > > >> I suggest you to retrieve the version of SYSLINUX 6.04; look here > > for more > > >> informations : > > >> > > https://groups.google.com/a/lbl.gov/forum/#!msg/warewulf/klTLgX-L4nw/IJZo3-jgAAAJ > > > > Now I rembember that not the BIOS update fixed my Thinkpad problem, > > but using a newer syslinux.efi from syslinux 6.04 was the proper fix. > > Will try that next. (For whatever reason there was no update of syslinux > in Debian for years... not even an backport. Stretch is growing old already.)
I owe you a report - a success report, that is. Using the files from syslinux-{common,efi}_6.04~git (as recommended by Thomas, already on July 11 - I must have missed that during my holidays), the boot delay almost vanished. No issues booting the Dell machine, and I also succeeded with an AMD Epyc one. For the latter, I found that the UEFI mode results in 7 *more* available memory pages than the LEGACY one (unless my counting algorithm is faulty). Not too big a difference, and given that I had to flip seven switches to go UEFI (boot mode, and 6 PCI-E OPROM modes), I'm still hesitant to enforce UEFI, but at least now I know that UEFI-only hardware won't be a showstopper anymore. (Got to think about adding a /boot/efi partition to all relevant disk_configs...) Thanks for all your suggestions. Now back to the preparations for the new setup (delivery will be in November, but I've got some hardware to test before)... - Steffen