Fedora12 on Acer Aspire 6930

[Phil Meyer]

On 11/26/2009 10:53 AM, Marco Crosio wrote:
> Hi people,
> i have just installed fedora 12 on my acer Aspire 6930, and everything
> go fine... (overwriting a perfectly running Fedora11 :) )
> but when i reboot the machine it taken very long times to complete the
> boot procedure...
>    

Some motherboards are still having problems generating enough entropy 
during the boot process.

Without bootchart running, try simply running a thumb or finger over the 
mouse pad, occasionally, during boot.  User input is always good entropy 
and the kernel will use it if it needs more.

You can watch the disk activity light.  If it stops, swipe the mouse 
pad.  If it starts right up again, then this is your issue.

On one test machine here, the boot process can take over 5 minutes!  If 
the mousepad is used during the boot process, the time to boot drops to 
15 seconds.

This is a clear issue of a lack of usable entropy on this system.  The 
normal places that the kernel looks for entropy are not used heavily on 
every type of motherboard.  Its a real challenge, because the kernel 
MUST load some things in random locations in order to maintain any type 
of security.  If it cannot get enough entropy to generate a good random 
number, it sits and waits until it can.

In the old days, the kernel did not care about this as much as it needs 
to now.  An older kernel might boot fast, but it may not be as secure.

With the 2.6.30 kernels, this seems to be a bigger issue than it was 
before, and seems to affect more mother boards.

If the mouse trick works for you, be sure to enter a bug with your smolt 
data so that the kernel guys can help the future kernels find the 
entropy it needs on your system type.

Good luck!