[fedora-arm] Re: Grub slow at loading kernel and initrd

On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 3:21 PM Michael Whapples
<contact@ashotinthedark.online> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I have been using fedora on my Odroid XU4 for some time (well over a
> year) and its generally been working well. I had been updating the
> install to the latest Fedora release as they came out. Recently though I
> decided to start with a fresh image of Fedora 35 and I noticed that it
> was very slow for grub to load the kernel and initrd (I haven't timed it
> but well over a minute). To check that it definitely was kernel and
> initrd loading I edited the menu item and inserted echo commands around
> the linux and initrd lines.
>
>
> Previously with the old Fedora install using the extlinux.conf boot
> configuration there was no such delay and the system could be fully
> booted in less time than it takes grub to load the kernel and initrd on
> the new install.
>
>
> Also with the new install I have tried manually starting the kernel and
> initrd from uboot, both the old bootz and the EFI bootefi commands, and
> neither of these have the delay I notice with grub.
>
>
> When I have searched online for a solution, I have found some reports of
> grub being slow to load the kernel, but no real answers as how to fix it.
>
>
> So my questions are:
>
> 1. Does anyone know how to solve this? Hints on how to debug grub and
> what is going on would also be welcome.

Do you have a keyboard attached when it boots?

grub2 uses the "drivers" provided by the firmware (U-Boot) and there
was a bug there, that should be fixed, or at least greatly improved,
in the rawhide builds of U-Boot. You can use the rawhide builds of
U-Boot firmware on stable releases. There should be a 2022.01 GA
release this week. Details here:
https://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2022-January/470773.html

> 2. As I can still get a installation using the extlinux.conf
> configuration instead of grub (either by installing an old version and
> upgrading or by booting the Everything installer in non-EFI mode), is
> this likely to be supported for much longer and is this really a
> sensible route to take?

It will be supported until the end EOL of Fedora 36 but that's also
when we're EOLing ARMv7 support in Fedora:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/RetireARMv7
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