Bug? Extremely slow loading of initrd if it has more than 4 extents on ext2

[Joschi Brauchle]

Hello everyone,

I have a problem with booting openSUSE 12.3 from an ext2 partition using 
GRUB 0.97 as follows:

If the initrd file uses **more than 4** extents on the ext2 partition, 
loading it takes "forever" on a recent Core2Duo system (i.e. up to ~60 
seconds). That is, grub prints:
------
root (hd0,0)
kernel ...
initrd ...
<flashing cursor for a long time, i.e. up to 60 seconds>
------
and then continues normally.


If the initrd file takes **4 or less** extents on the ext2 filesystem, 
the initrd is loaded in "no time" (i.e. faster than the eye can see).



I reported the problem here:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=808611

Is this a known problem?

Best regards,
J Brauchle

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