Upgrade to Mint 19 slows my PC especially boot

[LegacyMJR]

I have been using Linux Mint MATE for a couple of months (Windows convert). Running quite happily until I decided to upgrade to 19 last week. Luckily I did a full metal backup using Clonezilla to my Nas before I started. So I did a clean install of 64 bit Mint MATE 19 then ran all the updates. My boot time went from 10 seconds (SSD) to 4 minutes and 40 seconds! Discovered by reading that there is a problem with kernel version 24 so I re-did it stopping at kernel version 20. My boot time then dropped to 45 seconds and the whole system just "felt" slower. Am I doomed to forever sit on 18.3? Is it because my system is a few years old? Samsung Q330 with SSD and 8gb RAM. (Note that 18.3 was notably faster than Windows 10 but 19 is slower.)

[xenopeek]

It's because you updated everything and there is a bug in the latest kernel update (4.15.0-24) that causes the 4 minute boot issue. See viewtopic.php?f=46&t=272263#p1490119. You should be fine with Linux Mint 19, just avoid that kernel version.

[LegacyMJR]

As I said I did read that and then installed to kernel 20 but my boot time is till 47 seconds not 10 - do I have to live with this as a penalty for being up to date?

[xenopeek]

Apologies. I read too quickly...

I don't know what could cause such a difference between 18.3 and 19. Had you perhaps not installed latest kernel on 18.3 and microcode update for your processor? The meltdown and spectre fixes in both do affect boot time. The impact is more noticeable on systems with SSDs IIRC. I don't think that should explain 35 seconds difference though it might be a part of it.

Perhaps somebody else has a clue. You could collect some information about your boot that may be of help to pin the cause. See viewtopic.php?t=226892 for suggestion on commands to run. Share output here.

[LegacyMJR]

Have now attached the logs as requested. Please note that my boot time on mint mate 19 of 47 seconds (as opposed to 8 seconds on 18) is on a clean install.

bootresults.tar.gz

Note that if you add up output from time its about 8/9 seconds.

[KBD47]

Apparently, even booting to an older kernel will not fix the issue once the newer kernel has been installed for some machines:

A fix for this issue was already released, but the updated package is currently only available in the Ubuntu 18.04 proposed repositories - hopefully it will make it into the main repositories soon.
Booting to previous kernels apparently doesn't solve this issue.
https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/07/u ... auses.html

So hopefully a fix is on the way and should come down from Ubuntu to Mint, but not sure when it will arrive.
It is kind of dumb this bug got through as I understand it showed up on Debian Sid and was fixed there but Ubuntu didn't take care of it

[LegacyMJR]

OK thanks for the info. I guess I will stay on 18.3 until a fix comes through, Can you tell me what I should monitor to watch out for the fix? Anyway, it has been an interesting exercise for me as the last time I touched a Unix-like system in anger was 1995!

[KBD47]

OK thanks for the info. I guess I will stay on 18.3 until a fix comes through, Can you tell me what I should monitor to watch out for the fix? Anyway, it has been an interesting exercise for me as the last time I touched a Unix-like system in anger was 1995!

I would guess the Ubuntu 18.04.1 release will be much more stable and fewer bugs, those updates will show up in Mint as well.

[DAMIEN1307]

KBD47 wrote "Apparently, even booting to an older kernel will not fix the issue once the newer kernel has been installed for some machines:"
"Booting to previous kernels apparently doesn't solve this issue."

The following terminal commands will remove any residue left over from the faulty "24" kernel...(I usually do a "sudo apt autoremove" first)...DAMIEN

Kernel Cleanup after Deletion

dpkg -l | grep '^rc' | awk '{print $2}' | sudo xargs dpkg --purge

dpkg -l | grep '^rc' | awk '{print $2}' | xargs sudo apt-get purge

dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-headers && dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-image

[LegacyMJR]

Thanks for that. However, I have done a bare metal rollback to 18.3 from a clonezilla run I did immediately before the 19 clean install. I think I will stay on this until the problem appears to be resolved. I will mark this as resolved for the time being.