Unexpected behavior change after setting hostname kernel parm

[Member Gordo]

I’m booting live antiX-19.2.1_x64-base.iso directly from HDD (via grub), just
for familiarization purposes before doing an install.

Noticed the following peculiar behavior, 100% reproducible on my setup.
Wondering if anyone else can reproduce and perhaps diagnose. Summary:

* With kernel ‘hostname’ parameter unspecified, bootup and shutdown behavior
is normal.

* However, if ‘hostname’ parameter is explicitly supplied on the kernel
commandline as any value other than the default (“antiX1”), then
both bootup and shutdown times become abut 10-15 seconds longer.

Steps to reproduce:

Case 1:
* Boot from HDD iso with kernel ‘hostname’ parameter unspecified. Note
elapsed time until full desktop appears (including icons at left side).
* As soon as desktop comes up, start a ROXterm and do “sudo reboot”.
* Observe nearly instantaneous bash prompt, followed quickly (1-2 seconds)
by X shutdown and then the usual sequence of shutdown console messages.

Case 2:
* Boot from HDD iso with kernel hostname=foo.
* Observe that it takes about 10 – 15 seconds longer to reach full
desktop state than in Case 1. (In particular, the icons along the
left side are delayed by “many” seconds.)
* As soon as full desktop comes up, start a ROXterm and do “sudo reboot”.
* Observe delay of about 10 – 15 seconds until bash prompt seen, then
followed by X shutdown and usual console shutdown messages.

My guess is that hostname != “antiX1” results in some sort of persistence-
related squashfs activity, which fails and times out because squashfs is
read-only on the live iso image.

Anyone able to reproduce this?

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