[fedora-arm] Re: Grub slow at loading kernel and initrd

On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 3:21 PM Michael Whapples <contact(a)ashotinthedark.online&gt; wrote: > Hello, > > I have been using fedora on my Odroid XU4 for some time (well over a > year) and its generally been working well. I had been updating the > install to the latest Fedora release as they came out. Recently though I > decided to start with a fresh image of Fedora 35 and I noticed that it > was very slow for grub to load the kernel and initrd (I haven't timed it > but well over a minute). To check that it definitely was kernel and > initrd loading I edited the menu item and inserted echo commands around > the linux and initrd lines. > > > Previously with the old Fedora install using the extlinux.conf boot > configuration there was no such delay and the system could be fully > booted in less time than it takes grub to load the kernel and initrd on > the new install. > > > Also with the new install I have tried manually starting the kernel and > initrd from uboot, both the old bootz and the EFI bootefi commands, and > neither of these have the delay I notice with grub. > > > When I have searched online for a solution, I have found some reports of > grub being slow to load the kernel, but no real answers as how to fix it. > > > So my questions are: > > 1. Does anyone know how to solve this? Hints on how to debug grub and > what is going on would also be welcome. Do you have a keyboard attached when it boots?

grub2 uses the "drivers" provided by the firmware (U-Boot) and there was a bug there, that should be fixed, or at least greatly improved, in the rawhide builds of U-Boot. You can use the rawhide builds of U-Boot firmware on stable releases. There should be a 2022.01 GA release this week. Details here: https://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2022-January/470773.html > 2. As I can still get a installation using the extlinux.conf > configuration instead of grub (either by installing an old version and > upgrading or by booting the Everything installer in non-EFI mode), is > this likely to be supported for much longer and is this really a > sensible route to take? It will be supported until the end EOL of Fedora 36 but that's also when we're EOLing ARMv7 support in Fedora: