Long delay before Grub loads

Ask Fedora
1

Hello, I have a problem with the GRUB bootloader; it’s slow, and after I reinstalled Fedora because I was trying to make myself stow and it didn’t go well. So can anyone help me with installing systemd-boot or Lamine? I’m not the expert, and I don’t want to mess up my system again.

if you need my specs, they are there:
Fedora Linux 43 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) x86_64
Linux 6.19.11-200.fc43.x86_64
KDE Plasma 6.6.4 (Wayland)

13th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i5-13400F (16) @ 4.60 GH
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti [Discrete] (Driver Version: 580.126.18, CUDA Version: 13.0)
2x 16 GB DDR4 RAM

3

Grub displays a list of kernels on screen and waits for you to select one before (optionally) timing out and proceeding to boot whatever you have highlighted.

Changing to another bootloader isn’t going to make any appreciable difference, in case you weren’t aware.

I say this so you don’t waste time faffing about with other loaders (and potentially leaving yourself unbootable) for no measurable difference. Which aspect are you finding slow - perhaps we can address whatever is causing that before heading off down a potentially dark path.

3 Likes
4

Slow getting to the login screen?

You can use systemd-analyze to see the timings of the boot.

For example this is what I see on my desktop that has a 10s timeout in grub.

$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 12.339s (firmware) + 11.290s (loader) + 797ms (kernel) + 11.625s (initrd) + 5.497s (userspace) = 41.549s
graphical.target reached after 5.289s in userspace.

If I set the grub timeout smaller then the loader delay will of course be smaller ~1.3s.

You can see where the slowest part of the boot process is with:

systemd-analyze critical-chain

There is also systemd-analyze blame, but usually its systemd-analyze critical-chain that I find helps me focus on what is making a boot slow.

5

I’ve found the problem. Idk why my printer cable was preventing the bootloader to boot fast. Bc of that that USB port was getting the 45 seconds timeout that was preventing me to get faster into the system

2 Likes
6

You can enable fastboot / quick boot in BIOS, which tells the BIOS to proceed without fully initializing all USB connected devices, skipping and shorten hardware checks.

With Fast Boot disabled, your BIOS may:

  • Spend extra time detecting the printer
  • Try to identify it as a possible boot device
  • Wait for a response from the printer’s internal controller (the printer is in standby and first have to wake up, this can take extra long)

This is actually all happening before the OS loads, so unrelated to Fedora or any other OS you may install.

Give it a try.