When using a wifi connection, the boot process is slowed down by the ethernet interface. On my Pi2 B it can take more than a minute to reach the timeout and to continue the boot sequence.
It is because the eth0 interface is declared as “auto eth0” in the /etc/network/interfaces file. It waits for a cable to be connected and the timeout is quite big.
Changing the line to “allow-hotplug eth0” will abort the configuration of the ethernet interface when no cable is plugged.
I did this and now booting is really fast.
Changes where made also in the /var/www directory on files command/player_wrk.php, net-config2.php and net-config.php in order to write a corrected file when choosing the network connectivity.
Hi!
I was looking for a solution to this “problem”. So your trick is very welcome !
Could you please give more detail about what you exactly change in the file given : in net-config2.php “auto eth0” appears several times. Do I have to change each time it appears? etc…
Thanks a lot
I changed every occurence of auto eth0 to allow-hotplug eth0. I don’t know if this is necessary but I did it.
You can change the /etc/network/interface file, it won’t be changed until you do it via the web interface.
Hi,
Could you please let me know what you exactly changed in the net-config2.php?
If you could post the new file here I can check it.
Since the net-config2.php is used by sound@home app.
Thanks!
Hi Digx!
Happy to see you are back here !
Don’t know if you asked Stephane or me, but please find attached the file I have modified.
It work and boot 60 sec faster with this option.
regards net-config2.php.tar.gz (2.64 KB)
@ducobu
Even if your solution works, I see two problem
if you go to the network setting page, it will erase the modification you have done in /etc/network/interfaces
if one day your wifi is down (whatever is the reason) you won’t be able to use your system by pluging a ethernet cable so that reconfigure it etc…;
So it’s why, even if it is more complicated to modifiy as Stephane explained.
To find the files containing the “auto eth0” word:
fgrep -r "auto eth0" /var/www/*
To edit them and change every occurrence of “auto eth0” to “allow-hotplug eth0” with vi:
vi file.php
[ESC]:%s/auto eth0/allow-hotplug eth0/g
[ESC]:wq
where [ESC] is the escape key
I did not check the file provided by Balbuze but I guess it’s OK.
I checked it,
and it seems ok except for one issue needs to be fixed also from original php file:
line 106:
original -->
if (isset($_POST[‘wifisec’][‘ssid’]) && !empty($_POST[‘wifisec’][‘ssid’]) && $_POST[‘wifisec’][‘password’] && !empty($_POST[‘wifisec’][‘password’]))
to be: -->
if (isset($_POST[‘wifisec’][‘ssid’]) && !empty($_POST[‘wifisec’][‘ssid’]) && isset($_POST[‘wifisec’][‘password’]) && !empty($_POST[‘wifisec’][‘password’]))
I will finalize my check and I will ask Michelangelo to update the file net-config2.php in new release.
Thank you very much for this info, I’m also using the pi2 on wifi and had expected it to boot up quicker than it is doing.
I have a couple more questions (being totally new to Linux and PI)…
How did you know that it was the timeout on ether net? I didn’t get any output through hdmi when I booted volumio.
Would it also speed things up if using a fixed ip address for wifi, instead of waiting for DHCP to assign one?
It’s the way the file configuring the network is written that led me to this modification. I have been using Linux for many years and Debian based distributions (mainly Voyage) for my work and while searching to get an answer for a network problem I found that changing the line “auto eth0” to “allow-update eth0” would speed up the boot process. I tried it on Volumio with success.
The system initializes all interfaces present in the file /etc/network/interfaces. For Volumio, first the Wifi and then the ethernet. allow-hotplug enables the system to detect if a cable is present or not and it won’t initialize the ethernet interface if no cable is present.
Putting a fixed IP address will speed up a little bit, few seconds I guess, but you don’t boot your system so frequently. Unless you have a very slow responding DHCP server, stay on DHCP.
Excuse me, but unfortunately I’m not an expert about Linux, and when I follow exactly your instructions ( I use PuTTY), I get this written: fgrep: autoeth0: No such file or directory . Where is mi mistake ?
The first modification (inside /etc/network/interfaces) gone well…
Thanks
?