[SOLVED] Mageia 2: password prompt delay after booting

[mla]

When the login screen is first presented after a successful boot, one can enter a login ID immediately, but then there is something like a 15 seconds (on my machine) delay before one can move to the password prompt. It makes no difference whether I click on the password field, or hit either the tab or the return key to move focus. I am guessing that the delay is due to something like the system waiting for /etc/shadow to become available. I.e. that the login screen comes up before the system is ready to deal with it.

Any thoughts on how to get around this? Even just delaying the login screen appearance by 15 seconds would be fine -- it'll prevent family members getting thoroughly confused and complaining to me that the upgrade to Mageia 2 is no good.

[doktor5000]

The system is certainly not waiting for /etc/shadow to become available, because without it you wouldn't even get a text login, nobody would be able to login at all

So we need some more information, how did you do the upgrade, via DVD or via replacing your urpmi repositories? What desktop environment are you using, and which login manager? And could you please try to setup a new user, if the problem persists there?

[mla]

Well, it was a wild guess. But perhaps not *too* wild -- see below.

It was a clean, default KDE install from the DVD image held on disk. So DISPLAYMANAGER=kdm, DESKTOP=KDE4. The problem was first observed on a completely new account, created as a part of the install process. I've just double-checked it, setting up a new test account -- same trouble.

However, switching quickly to Ctrl-Alt-F12 while waiting for the password field to get focus, I note that the end of the delay appears to coincide with all disks being re-mounted! And /var/log/syslog shows the test appended at the end of this post.

The "no IPv6 routers present" line is the first one I see on the scrolling display on F12. It's preceded by a six second gap, -- the login ID was entered during that gap (it took me less than 6 seconds to type "test" and hit Ctrl-Alt-F12). The cursor starts blinking in the password field just after the re-mounts.

(Incidentally, another oddity... The X session is sometimes on F7 and sometimes on F1; when on F7, F1 shows absolutely nothing -- blank screen -- one has to go to F2 for console login.)

May 26 10:25:38 Athlon kernel: [ 24.079515] ppdev0: no associated port!
May 26 10:25:44 Athlon kernel: [ 29.890016] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720033] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720038] ata4.00: failed command: SET FEATURES
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720043] ata4.00: cmd ef/c2:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720044] res 40/00:fe:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720047] ata4.00: status: { DRDY }
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720052] ata4: hard resetting link
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.025012] ata4: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.028072] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/133
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.028084] ata4: EH complete
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.043562] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/133
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.043565] ata4: EH complete
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon hddtemp[1312]: Starting hard disk temperature monitor daemon[ OK ]
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon systemd[1]: Startup finished in 1s 460ms 227us (kernel) + 5s 64ms 844us (initrd) + 28s 773ms 963us (userspace) = 35s 299ms 34us.
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.404147] EXT4-fs (sda10): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.488811] EXT4-fs (sdb10): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.574073] EXT4-fs (sdb14): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.667704] EXT4-fs (sdb6): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.724203] EXT4-fs (sdb13): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.811978] EXT4-fs (sdb16): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:50 Athlon kernel: [ 35.888520] EXT4-fs (sdb8): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 35.953330] EXT4-fs (sdb1): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 36.015871] EXT4-fs (sdb15): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 36.075341] EXT4-fs (sdb5): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 36.156413] EXT4-fs (sdb12): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 36.221439] EXT4-fs (sda7): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 36.302046] EXT4-fs (sdb7): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 36.369847] EXT4-fs (sdb11): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 36.417179] EXT4-fs (sda9): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 36.455380] EXT4-fs (sda8): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:25:51 Athlon kernel: [ 36.497900] EXT4-fs (sda6): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0
May 26 10:28:31 Athlon acpid: client 937[0:0] has disconnected

[isadora]

How to:

http://ftp.mandrivauser.de/rpm/rpm/extr ... e_tags.ogv

[doktor5000]

Seems like some hardware issue, that

May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720033] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720038] ata4.00: failed command: SET FEATURES
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720043] ata4.00: cmd ef/c2:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720044] res 40/00:fe:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720047] ata4.00: status: { DRDY }
May 26 10:25:49 Athlon kernel: [ 34.720052] ata4: hard resetting link

sounds like some hard drive/mainboard issue.

[mla]

Hmmm... I've been checking logs and it only happens once during the boot (100% reproducible) and at no other time. A curiously selective hardware glitch.

Looking back at some old Mageia 1 logs, I see the same happening, except that there the boot process took longer and the disks got re-mounted before the login screen came up, so there was no user-visible effect. Unfortunately I no longer have any Mandriva instances to check logs on.

[doktor5000]

Well, if it happens with another version of the distro, sounds even more like a hardware problem, i'm afraid. Even it's only a selective little glitch ...

You may want to have a look at f.ex: viewtopic.php?p=18048#p18048

[mla]

OK... I've now installed OpenSUSE alongside Mageia 2 and have repeatedly booted both and examined systems logs. ATA hard resets during boot are triggered reliably by Mageia and are just as reliably absent in OpenSUSE. No disk trouble on either system otherwise.

[doktor5000]

From googling around a bit, this does seem to come from SATA link power management (and it's quite widespread problem, just google it)
Maybe you want to have a look at http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-6449773.html

Mind to give some more details about the hardware in question, if this is a laptop or not, which harddrives does it contain and which SATA controllers and if you maybe already changed any settings regarding power management, maybe even in BIOS or so.

[mla]

Yey, now you are talking!! (You are right, of course, I shuold have googled that error message once I discovered it -- mea culpa.)

OK, I can confirm that creating an empty /etc/pm/power.d/harddrive does help. Disks still get remounted (why?!) but there is no error message and the remount happens very quickly, instead of after a 15 second wait. If I start typing login ID as soon as the login screen comes up, there is a half a second or so delay on echoing the first character. I can live with that.

As for hardware details... No, not a laptop -- a desktop (a mini-tower). Controller: nVidia MCP73 IDE. Disks sda: Maxtor 6L200M0, sdb Maxtor STM350032. Power management as installed by the Mageia installer -- no fiddling.

Thanks for your help! I can now switch default boot to Mageia 2 without causing grumbles.

[doktor5000]

OK, so as that helped, please mark the thread as [SOLVED], thanks in advance.