Random boot issue? Hopefully (Solved)

[peppyy]

Greetings again all.
Being old school I shutdown every night, and on occasion I have a boot issue. This machine boots really fast with my ssd and 32gb of ram with a frugal install.
That being said, once in a while I will see the boot stall when copying the adrive to ram. I have run several live tests on the memory and found no issues. Usually when it hangs I press the reset button on the retro case,(yes I still have one) and it boots normally.

Sometimes I get a normal boot, 15 to 20 seconds and everything looks fine until I launch an app like Palemoon. It will pause and I notice gatotray turning yellow, indicating I/O wait. I give it a few minutes and nothing happens. It eventually turns completely yellow. Have tried to launch htop during this and get no response.

Is there a log somewhere that might have more information, or does anyone have an idea why this might be happening?
It is pretty rare, maybe once a month and it only happens after a power on. Once it is up and running it is pretty much bullet proof.

Thanks. Specs in Signature.

[bigpup]

In the computers bios setup.

Need to have fast boot disabled.
could be labeled fast start or something similar.

If you provide the make and model of computer, could maybe give a better answer, than this generic one.

Kind of strange things like this can also be caused by a bad download of the Puppy version ISO.
And or a bad install.
It does happen.

[bigpup]

run Quickpet ->Info->Fossapup updates
May or may not help, but it will give you a few bug fixes and tweaks, to improve Fossapup64.

[peppyy]

@bigpup Unless there is a bugfix newer than 04/07/2021 I have them all. Been running this since shortly after the official release. Distro: fossapup64 9.5 Frugal Install on ext4, Mobo, M5A99FX PRO - CPU, AMD FX-6300 6 core - mem,32GB - Storage ssd 128GB - ssd-256GB - GPU AMD/ATI RV630 PRO, in a huge old tower case.

As you can see it is a mutt.

Just wondering if there might be a hardware issue, memory or ssd. I used to have a utility to test HDD drives though I can't find it

[Phoenix]

Greetings again all.
Being old school I shutdown every night, and on occasion I have a boot issue. This machine boots really fast with my ssd and 32gb of ram with a frugal install.
That being said, once in a while I will see the boot stall when copying the adrive to ram. I have run several live tests on the memory and found no issues. Usually when it hangs I press the reset button on the retro case,(yes I still have one) and it boots normally.

Sometimes I get a normal boot, 15 to 20 seconds and everything looks fine until I launch an app like Palemoon. It will pause and I notice gatotray turning yellow, indicating I/O wait. I give it a few minutes and nothing happens. It eventually turns completely yellow. Have tried to launch htop during this and get no response.

Is there a log somewhere that might have more information, or does anyone have an idea why this might be happening?
It is pretty rare, maybe once a month and it only happens after a power on. Once it is up and running it is pretty much bullet proof.

Thanks. Specs in Signature.

So you're using an SSD not connected via a USB adapter, and you're letting it copy to ram? How much data in total does your squashfiles add up to?
Might be power issue/unreliability of the port.

[bigpup]

Is there a log somewhere that might have more information

/var/log/
messages
Xorg.O.log

These two files record what happens during the boot up process.

I fixed an older desktop computer, that was kind of doing strange things like yours.

Over time connections can work loose and loose good contact.

Took the covers off the case.
Unplugged everything that could be unplugged.
Checked all connections for condition.
Clean.
No corrosion.
No bent contacts.
Etc.......

did find some connection points that needed cleaning.

Inside of computer had dust bunnies in places.
Fans dirty and cleaned them.

Plugged everything back in, making sure connection was solid.

No more issues.

[peppyy]

@Phoenix I have 95% ram available when booted. I have not seen the ram go below 85% even with multiple applications open on multiple desktops. The odd thing is once it is booted it has always been rock solid.

@bigpup You are probably right. I had an issue when I first did the build. Although everything seemed good it would not post. Turned to be one stick of ram was not completely seated. The ram was already installed on the mobo and I didn't think to check it) I do know my old Gear Head keyboard is getting to the point I should replace it since the case is tall enough that it barely fits under the desk. Would be a good time to clean out the dust bunnies and check all the connections in the case.

The Beast 2.jpg (97.35 KiB) Viewed 625 times

[peppyy]

After a thorough case cleaning, cable and memory check, a new mouse and keyboard, it kept getting worse until I found out the drive had defective firmware and updated it.
Back to normal boots, (apparently) since I updated the firmware. The drive had a bug that would show up at around 5000 hours of uptime.
It got so bad that it would not boot at all so I booted to my second drive with Tahr on it. I ran gsmartcontrol and found the clues. Downloaded the firmware update, burned the iso and updated it.

Interestingly, I could read the drive just fine from Tahr, copy files, saved a backup of my save folder etc. It appears that it would "hang" at a certain point during boot and become read only. According to the update, the drive would hang during power-up due to a bug in the smart firmware.

The new mouse and keyboard are nice too.
Thanks to everyone for the help!