Adam, you're right in your original post that initrd is the cause of the delay. Other non-Ubuntu based distros do not have the long 50 secs wait to boot OS at usb. (same kernel) It's just 13 secs vs 50secs. (haven't tried Debian distros).
One would think after 5 years, something ought to be done about it. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel Packages, which is subscribed to linux in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/247960 Title: Grub long sequential reads are extremely slow from USB2.0 HDD/FLASH drives Status in GRand Unified Bootloader: Confirmed Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu: Invalid Bug description: Grub long sequential reads are extremely slow from USB2.0 HDD/FLASH drives. Reading vmlinuz(4.6MB) + initrd(18MB) takes several minutes (~0.5Mb/s) Issues affects all grub versions until current in Natty (1.99~rc1-13ubuntu1). But might be related to bad BIOS implementations. Affected chipsets: Intel 915 (todo) Intel 965 (82801G) Nvidia MCP79 Not-Affected chipsets: Intel 965 (82801H) Original description: I'm using Hardy. Nothing happens for 50 seconds during bootup. There is only a blinking cursor on the screen after the grub menu. After the 50 seconds the splash screen appears. This problem only occurs on cold start, it doesn't happen when I just reboot. I have an HP nw8440 laptop. I'm attaching my dmesg and lspci -vv output. Old Update: I've found out that initrd is read really slowly and this is causing the long delay during boot. Please read comment #27: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/247960/comments/27 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/grub/+bug/247960/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages Post to : kernel-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp