[plug] Ubuntu woes - RESOLVED

[Steve Baker]

Jason Nicholls wrote:
> Sorry if this was already suggested.
>
> Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and remove the "quiet" and "splash" options so
> you can see the full kernel boot messages. It may give you an idea of
> where things are hanging for a while. Bootchart as someone else
> suggested is a good option in addition to this.
>   

Thanks to everyone who threw in suggestions.

After lots of experimentation over the weekend, including removing the 
system drives from the raid card and attaching them directly to the 
motherboard because I thought it didn't like booting from the raid, I 
have discovered that this system simply doesn't like the latest 
2.6.24-19 kernel update (it doesn't like the -18 update either).

I realised that booting off the Hardy install CD was very quick, 
originally I thought that was because it wasn't touching the raid 
however I/O to the array after booting off the CD was very fast.  I 
ended up copying the kernel, initrd, /lib/modules/... and other required 
files to my /boot partition and booting that kernel (2.6.24-16-generic) 
instead; now the system boots really quickly and has very snappy overall 
performance.

Once I'd determined it was the latest updates causing the problem, I 
started looking and found a bunch of people with similar problems - 
really poor performance after upgrading to kernel update -18 or -19.  It 
never occurred to me previously that this might be the problem, as my 
laptop didn't have any problems at all with the -18 or the -19 updates.

This is a really weird one, it's strange that the process of unpacking 
and booting the kernel is now so very very slow, and even once that is 
done the system as a whole is very slow.

Regards,
Steve