Rowan Posted November 20, 2004 Report Share Posted November 20, 2004 Hello all I am a complete green horn as far as the list goes so I will give it a try. I have been using 9.1 for about the last 18 months and I recently changed to 10.0 Official but I want to edit the lilo to reduce the timeout time at the beginning of the boot cycle. I have found the appropriate file (etc/lilo/config) and I want to know - can I just edit the timeout from 100 down to 2 or 3 and then reboot or is there more involved ?? Many thanks for any advice PS. What is timeout there for anyway ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted November 20, 2004 Report Share Posted November 20, 2004 If you are dual booting then it gives you enough time to decide which OS you want to boot into otherwise it then boots into the default OS whatever that is. Are you so sure that you cannot wait 10 seconds instead of 2 or 3. I just cannot fathom the idea that every second saved in booting up is so damned urgent even for a laptop let alone a PC. This is not a personal dig at you, just an observation that I cannot find to be realistic. Anyway now not so green horn, welcome to the MUB. It is the best place to be when you want to be in the best place. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted November 21, 2004 Report Share Posted November 21, 2004 There can be other reasons for doing this. E.g. Windows is installed and you want to keep the family out of linux so timeout is very quick. Just make it a small value if you want.. Remember to run lilo to process your changes to the file lilo.conf. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Posted November 21, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2004 Thank you for your replies but I think that, upon reflection, I owe you an apology for getting confused about what I was asking for. Let's try again. What I was really trying to ask about is the time period AFTER lilo selection when the screen just sits there with a blue band across it for no aparent reason before deciding to boot up. What is this waiting period for and is it possible to get rid of it ? It just seems to be a waste of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted November 21, 2004 Report Share Posted November 21, 2004 Interesting thing with the wayLilo displays the timeout, my time out is set to 60, which is six seconds...... not sixty seconds. or not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted November 21, 2004 Report Share Posted November 21, 2004 Thank you for your replies but I think that, upon reflection, I owe you an apology for getting confused about what I was asking for. Let's try again. What I was really trying to ask about is the time period AFTER lilo selection when the screen just sits there with a blue band across it for no aparent reason before deciding to boot up. What is this waiting period for and is it possible to get rid of it ? It just seems to be a waste of time. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Oh, i see :D Well its not just sitting there doing nothing, its actuallly booting the system. What you see after the blue band is KDE or Gnome loading up. Next time you reboot and see the blue band, press the ESC key and you can view a text screen showing you the boot process in progress. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted November 21, 2004 Report Share Posted November 21, 2004 Thank you for your replies but I think that, upon reflection, I owe you an apology for getting confused about what I was asking for. Let's try again. What I was really trying to ask about is the time period AFTER lilo selection when the screen just sits there with a blue band across it for no aparent reason before deciding to boot up. What is this waiting period for and is it possible to get rid of it ? It just seems to be a waste of time. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> 60 milliseconds! Nice... but I prefer picoseconds (I'm a fast typer) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted November 21, 2004 Report Share Posted November 21, 2004 There is also a way of setting your system to always display the text as it boots. Makes it more interesting. Look in MCC under booting.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Posted November 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2004 Sorry for the delay - work gets in the way. My system goes LILO, then a wait of about 1 minute with just the blue band and then the band says "booting the system - press Esc for verbose mode". What is happening in the middle period ? The system does not react to any key pushing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted November 24, 2004 Report Share Posted November 24, 2004 Hmmm. That sounds like you are experiencing some problems if there is that long of a wait between selecting the OS and getting the chance to hit Esc to see the text. Some things you can try: In the append line of the linux you boot to, try adding noapic in there and run lilo after saving the file. also try acpi=off and/or nolapic (not quite sure about the last one) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted November 24, 2004 Report Share Posted November 24, 2004 sounds like a bios-check problem to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Posted November 26, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 26, 2004 Thanks Steve Unfortunately I have no idea where you are talking about to get to the 'append' line. I told you that I am a complete novice. I understand only a very little apart from configuring my system as it is used for business purposes and I have never needed or wanted to dig beneath the skin before now. Please elaborate about this append line mod. In the append line of the linux you boot to, try adding noapic in there and run lilo after saving the file. also try acpi=off and/or nolapic (not quite sure about the last one) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted November 26, 2004 Report Share Posted November 26, 2004 The append comments are in your Lilo conf file. This file is located in /etc/lilo.conf For example: image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux" root=/dev/sda9 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="nolapic resume=/dev/sda7 splash=silent" vga=788 read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux-nonfb" root=/dev/sda9 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="nolapic resume=/dev/sda7 splash=silent" read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz label="failsafe" root=/dev/sda9 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="failsafe acpi=on resume=/dev/sda7 splash=silent" read-only Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Posted November 27, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2004 Mine looks slightly different to yours. Where do you suggest I do any editing ? Do I have to delete something ? I don't want to shag my system. image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux" root=/dev/hda5 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent" vga=788 read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux-nonfb" root=/dev/hda5 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6" read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz label="failsafe" root=/dev/hda5 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6 devfs=nomount" read-only Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted November 29, 2004 Report Share Posted November 29, 2004 append="devfs=mount noapic acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent" After you edit this file and save it, make sure to run the command lilo -v Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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