[grey]

What's up with that?

Powerbook G4, 550mhz, 256mb
Appletalk active.
Happens whether the laptop is disconnected, or connected via ethernet, or in range of 802.11 signal.
Power cord plugged in or unplugged.
When I first boot up after having shut down, the "initializing network" phase of start up takes ages, but if I restart, it takes around 10 seconds.

Suggestions?

[K++]

im guessing its taking a while to recieve a DHCP lease and upon restart already has one. If that is the case then hardcoding IPs for your setups should work, otherwise your stuck with the long wait to time out and get a 192.168.0.0 ip.

[fulmer]

what version of OS X?

OS 10.1.x was bad about hanging, particularly if you're using an airport network that has no 'net connection available. try turning off airport on your powerbook, then see if you get the hangs.

[pat++]

Set a fixed IP address for Airport and ethernet. You mac is probably waiting for an ip from a DHCP server.

[raskol]

Assuming that you are using a DHCP server:

I found that if I put a DNS server IP in system prefs it got past initializing faster.

In the terminal type: nslookup www.apple.com

You should see something like this:

Server: logs.kc.rr.com
Address: 24.94.165.25 << use whatever IP is here

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.apple.com.akadns.net
Address: 17.254.0.91
Aliases: www.apple.com

[macrophyllum]

Also make sure you are set to connect to a network time server. This cause my computer to boot MUCH slower. Then I turned it off and now it boots fast.

[grey]

fulmer: osx is up to date, whatever the latest version is.. 1.4?

The DHCP wait sounds logical... but what about the huge wait even when it isn't plugged into a network?

I think the hangs are still there with Airport off, because this was happening while I was home from university during the summer.

raskol: yeah, I input DNS servers manually too...

macrophyllum: YES, network time! I'm almost sure this is the problem! I'll try disabling it..

Thanks guys

edit: blah, network time server was already disabled :/

[hudson1]

Take a look at the Network prefs pane and check the Active Network Ports (the 'show' drop-down menu). The order that they are listed is the order that OS X uses to try to establish a network connection. The list can be re-arranged by dragging. Is the ethernet connection listed first? If not, re-order the connections and see if that makes a difference on your startup times. HTH.

[fulmer]

current version is 10.2. of the 10.1.x releases, 10.1.5 is the most current of those.

10.2 does a better job with not hanging.

you might also check your disk for errors, just in case drive problems are making it slow to boot. that is sometimes the culprit. I'd fsck or boot from the OS X cd-rom and run disk utility.

[Fillman]

suggest you do a verbose startup and you will see which process is causing the delay. It could be fsck, network DNS or time server. The dispaly will show you.

Verbose startup is doing Apple (Command ) v key combination at reboot.

[grey]

OK, i tried a verbose startup and here's what i saw:

Configuring network
Initializing network
*time passes...*

ipconfig_get_option failed (os/kern failure)

>> doesn't look good