Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

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patrickparks1
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Joined: 2020/02/26 05:48:52

Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by patrickparks1 » 2020/02/26 05:56:44

Hello,

Long term Linux user, specifically RHEL and CentOS. Tonight at home, I decided I would take one of my old desktops and install CentOS 8 on it. My hardware is circa 2009, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550, 8GB of RAM, Nvidia GTX570 video, 500GB SSD, and Gigabyte GA-EP45-UDR3 motherboard. I downloaded the latest version of CentOS 8 and configured it to boot from a USB key.

The OS installed just fine. I went with a "Server with a GUI" option.

When I boot, my box posts fine, the Grub boot menu comes up, I select the first option, then my screen goes black, I get a blinking - in the upper left corner and my hard drive light comes on solid, for about 20 seconds. Then, my hard drive light stats flashing and the box boots like normal.

I'm trying to determine what is causing this delay after selecting the kernel to boot from the grub menu. It's more than doubling the amount of time it takes my box to boot.

I reinstalled the OS, same issue. I installed a minimal install, same issue. I removed my SSD, and put in a standard SATA hard drive and had the same problem. I updated the kernel, same problem, I updated the entire box, same problem.


So, I went and downloaded CentOS 7 and installed it from a USB key onto the same hardware and it immediately boots after selecting the kernel from grub as I would expect.

Any suggestions as to what is different with Cent8?

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TrevorH
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Re: Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by TrevorH » 2020/02/26 13:09:40

When you see the grub menu, edit the entry you're about to boot and remove the parameters rhgb quiet from it before you continue. That will disable the stupid "hide everything useful" default option and let you see what is happening and when. Might want to video the boot as it can move pretty quickly and even 20s might not be enough to see and diagnose what it's waiting for.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

patrickparks1
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Re: Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by patrickparks1 » 2020/02/27 06:25:44

I did remove the rhgb and quiet options....i almost always do that.

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

When I reboot, the grub menu comes up, I hit enter on the kernel and it goes to the blinking cursor and hard drive LED is on solid. It just sits there, with no other output to the terminal. After about 20 seconds, it fires off like normal, goes through all of the services and everything is fine.

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TrevorH
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Re: Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by TrevorH » 2020/02/27 12:41:32

Check the actual grub menu itself and edit it there s a one time change. If your machine is in UEFI mode then /boot/grub2/grub.cfg is not the correct file and changes there will make no difference.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

patrickparks1
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Joined: 2020/02/26 05:48:52

Re: Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by patrickparks1 » 2020/02/28 15:05:57

The grub menu is being updated correctly, and rhgb quiet has been removed.
My box is old, from 2009, so it's a standard BIOS and not UEFI.

I suspect the box is immediately scanning for something that it either doesn't find or times out and then it starts the actual systemd startup. It just sits there with the cursor blinking and the hard drive LED on solid. It's an SSD drive so it should not be slow.

My testing is limited here, as I went back to CentOS7 which is working like I would expect it to be.

BShT
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Re: Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by BShT » 2020/02/28 17:53:50

some old BIOS has a kind of "virus" detection... try to disable it

own3mall
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Re: Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by own3mall » 2021/11/30 01:57:47

I have the same issue in the latest version of CentOS 8 (I think we're on 8.5 now?). Except, my blinking cursor shows for about 5 minutes before it continues to boot. This is from a Dell c1100 server. Anyone ever figure out what the slowdown is? I've removed the quiet parameters from grub, and it still happens before the boot process continues, and I still am not sure what's causing the slow boot. :cry:

The server does have an old 2008 LSI SAS RAID controller in it... not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Anyone have any other ideas as to how I could troubleshoot this?

enigma131
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Re: Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by enigma131 » 2021/11/30 08:39:18

Does it mean system is Raid build with 2 disks ?
And if yes what kind of Raid ?
Perhaps a raid reconstruct at boot, please check Smart data for each disk.
CentOs 8 to RHEL 8 migrated

own3mall
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Joined: 2013/08/30 17:50:11

Re: Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by own3mall » 2021/11/30 22:01:20

It's a RAID 10 setup using 4 1TB SAS drives.

It happens after you select a kernel to boot, so would that be something to do with RAID even though it's already made it past its BIOS initialization?

I've tried adding "debug=all" to the command line for the grub entry, but that didn't change anything either.

enigma131
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Re: Long pause with blinking cursor after Grub menu

Post by enigma131 » 2021/12/01 10:15:07

As written above and before investigate more on Raid itself, please provide SMART informations of all disks involved.
CentOs 8 to RHEL 8 migrated

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