Hi, I am new to Lubuntu (have historically used Ubuntu and elementaryOS) on this machine and am experiencing slow boot times into fresh installation of Lubuntu 24.04. It works great once into the desktop - super snappy and great but getting there is taking some time. This is on a 2008 macbook 5,1 - specs below via neofetch.
Last boot (from hitting the powerbutton) I timed at just under 3 minutes. Symptom is that the screen is black for over half this time with a static (non flashing) white dash in the upper left corner of the black screen. Dash disappears, I then briefly get some screen garble and then the circulating blue Lubuntu hummingbird logo load screen pops up and then promptly into desktop.
Is this normal behavior for Lubuntu? It doesnt seem like it and I read about previous builds as of 18 having worse delays at boot (7-8-10minutes!) so was hoping that there was a solution that I did not see searching this forum. Thank you all in advance for any assistance in trimming down the boot time.
I did want to add a few things that I have noticed/tried and forgot to add to my original inquiry.
My 240gb SSD is older, so I considered a hardware/drive issue. I have a 2nd identical spec macbook so ran the same USB installer on that macbook except with a 140gb spinner vs the ssd and got the same freeze/slow boot behavior. This leads me to think it is not hardware related, rather something software.
When I boot and it is “frozen”, I cant get into grub or anything. The keyboard is completely unresponsive until just before the blue Lubuntu hummingbird boot screen appears.
Same issue here although I often have up to 4-5 minutes without anything happening. Using a Macbook Pro 2009.
Journalctl -b have given me reason to believe it has to do with systemd-network and that it times out before continuing. I’ve tried quite a lot of different things but not succeeded yet.
I get the same error no matter if I use wifi or plugged in to an ethernet cable.
I believe the screen garbage isn’t related though, I had the same during install etc. but got rid of it when disabling boot screen and have seen nothing of it ever since. But something with the Lubuntu distro isn’t playing a 100% nice with rhe older Macbook hardwares it seems. But I’m pretty confident that there will be a solution sometime.
I wonder if the hardware they put on the Macbook’s is special or something. Might be one of those cases where it isn’t greatly supported on Linux due to the vendor.
systemd-resolved[556]: Using degraded feature set UDP instead of UDP+EDNS0 for DNS server 192.168.1.1
This means it’s not talking to the default dns. EDNS0 means the Mac was trying to use an extension mechanism for DNS (I haven’t had to deal with this myself - not an Apple fan, so, I’ll defer here), failed and switched back to non-extended DNS and then probably failed again. Simple question: is your DNS at 192.168.1.1? If not then it’s a configuration issue.
Well spotted! Indeed the DNS is not located there, the router is however. I get a bit curious to why it’s going there for DNS, /etc/resolv.conf doesn’t point there for example.
Another hint at the problem at least.
@Certofex - You have the same issue as me, the delay isn’t visible without checking the log. Try sudo journalctl -b and look for the section where you get a few minutes delay.
hm… curious there are no measurements for the firmware? 26s from power on to ready is pretty decent… Well, this + the journalctl output you provided would seem to point to a dns configuration issue.
I will indeed investigate the matter. The boot time - timeout excluded - is indeed as snappy as one would hope. I just hope to solve the boot case.
Have had a few hectic days with work + family, so I haven’t had time to look into this, but will return as soon as I have. Thank you for good and relevant feedback!
I tried the same and voila - boot time down to roughly 20 seconds! Will keep an eye on the problem and see if it’s a temporary or permanent solution.
Once again thank you @eeyore for your help! Much appreciated!
