Reminder: MX Live uses "try=XX" not "rootdelay=XX"

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BitJam
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Reminder: MX Live uses "try=XX" not "rootdelay=XX"

#1 Post by BitJam »

For many years one of the standard suggestions for getting a Live system to boot (on many distros) was to use the "rootdelay" boot parameter in order to give buses time to settle before the Live system started looking for the boot device. AFAICT, this parameter has no effect on the MX and antiX Live systems. Instead we have the try=XX boot parameter which is much better and has seldom required manual adjustment by users.

The difference is that rootdelay=10 (when it is applicable) will wait 10 seconds no matter what before the boot process starts. This makes the system take longer to boot and it can be confusing because nothing at all happens for 10 seconds. With MX and antiX, we always try to boot up as quickly as possible. The try=NN parameter tells us to give up looking for the boot device after NN seconds. This means there is little penalty for having a large default try value. The default is 15 seconds and AFAIK, no one has ever needed a value larger than that. Having a rootdelay default of 15 seconds would be annoying because every system would sit and do nothing for 15 seconds before the boot process starts.

There are two other similar boot parameters: ftry=XX and ptry=XX which control the timeouts for looking for the frugal device and the persistence device (if it is different from the boot device). The defaults for these two are both set to 10 seconds. The ftry parameter will be introduced in the upcoming point release.

Also, the bug that caused some people to need to use load=all should be fixed in the upcoming point release. If all of this works as planned then in the point release and going forward, the most likely boot parameter needed might be acpi=off which is available in the "F4 Options" menu. Some people will still need to use the "F5 Video Mode" menu to get X windows to work and to prevent KMS from blanking their screen.

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