Comment 22 for bug 601986

Although I have not explored every aspect that Jim has described I believe I may be observing the same (or a related) issue, albeit in Kubuntu Meerkat RC. My NB305 has been slow while installing, booting, running, and shutting down. The interesting part? For the first time I think that my impatience and pressing keys (generally shift) really is having an affect on the system. This even applies to the initial boot message (if I don't press any keys):

Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
- Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
- Check root= (did the system wait for right device?)
-Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/<yada-yada> does not exist. Dropping to shell!

If I hold shift down immediately after Grub then this doesn't come up. During the remainder of the boot process I can practically turn the HD LED on and off by pressing and releasing the shift key. I suspect that the shift key is having a similar effect on the kernel as Jim's infinite loop program. I am now booted again after reinstalling and the mouse seems to be having a similar effect while in X, when the mouse works that is.

Back on the install topic, when selecting the timezone even the current time display would not update unless I pressed or held a key. Also, I am using a USB to IDE adapter with a normal 'internal' DVDROM drive. Perhaps this uses a different driver than the CDROM that Jim used? Just trying to guess at why I have trouble with the CDROM but Jim doesn't.

I installed bootchart but it had no apparent effect. I am now trying the hdparm speed test. If I hold down shift throughout the test I get 128MB in 3.02 seconds (42.36 MB/sec). If I only press shift a couple times to get the test started... hdparm just hangs after printing "Timing buffered disk reads:" until I press shift again. The result this time was 10MB in 108.42 seconds (94.45 kB/sec).

My experiences certainly don't quite mirror Jim's, but (obviously) I think they seem to be related. Jim, does holding down shift do anything for you when not using any of your other 'solutions'?