Arch Linux

trc

Member

From: Beaver Dam, WI

Registered: 2010-01-14

Posts: 85

Website

Really slow boot-time, any help?

Yeah, I've struggled with geting my boot time down for a while, I've looked at the wiki and tinkered with readahead-fedora, and nothing seems to help.

Here are the daemons I load on boot.

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng !dbus hal !network !netfs @crond @gdm @alsa @wicd @avahi-daemon @vmware @tor @privoxy)

and here is my bootchart

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/9651/bootchartg.png

I think we can all agree that much boot time is insane for a dual core i5 processor

You guys notice any unusual things going on there?

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~trc

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

28 seconds, am I reading it right? Nope, it's not insane, sorry.

iTwenty

Member

From: India

Registered: 2010-10-24

Posts: 63

Website

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

Are you using Arch on laptop.? The 5400 rpm drives of most laptops boot far slower than 7200 rpm desktop ones. My lappy with i5 takes about the same time to go from GRUB to KDM login.

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“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

trc

Member

From: Beaver Dam, WI

Registered: 2010-01-14

Posts: 85

Website

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

Yeah I am using a laptop.

The reason why I think that boot time is insane is because number 1 it takes a full 50 seconds to reach desktop, and my old pentium 4 desktop booted far faster.

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~trc

ngoonee

Forum Fellow

From: Between Thailand and Singapore

Registered: 2009-03-17

Posts: 7,354

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

Yeah I am using a laptop.

The reason why I think that boot time is insane is because number 1 it takes a full 50 seconds to reach desktop, and my old pentium 4 desktop booted far faster.

Running what OS? And as iTwenty says, most laptops (especially budget ones) have 5400 RPM hard discs. Mine does, and even with a core2duo and 4 GB RAM it takes me over a minute and a half to reach a logged-in Gnome.

Want it faster? Don't use X .

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Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

evot

Member

From: Finland

Registered: 2010-02-26

Posts: 96

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

It is also possible to get new hard disk or ssd.

thestinger

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Toronto, Canada

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 478

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

Have you tried this wiki article? Manually loading modules, making inittab asynchronous and using the quiet kernel option add up to a fairly big difference.

You use GNOME, so you can get rid of hal (it's slow and deprecated). Just use @dbus in DAEMONS and @acpid if you use it. You can use cpufreq from cpufrequtils if you need cpu scaling (I don't know if hal does that). upower/udisks take care of all the stuff hal gives you in userspace (and you already have them).

Last edited by thestinger (2010-11-09 15:15:40)

trc

Member

From: Beaver Dam, WI

Registered: 2010-01-14

Posts: 85

Website

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

I'm confused, according to the HAL wiki, the HAL daemon should still be in rc.conf when using dbus unless the wiki is outdated?

Last edited by trc (2010-11-09 16:28:26)

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~trc

trc

Member

From: Beaver Dam, WI

Registered: 2010-01-14

Posts: 85

Website

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

Yeah I am using a laptop.

The reason why I think that boot time is insane is because number 1 it takes a full 50 seconds to reach desktop, and my old pentium 4 desktop booted far faster.

Running what OS? And as iTwenty says, most laptops (especially budget ones) have 5400 RPM hard discs. Mine does, and even with a core2duo and 4 GB RAM it takes me over a minute and a half to reach a logged-in Gnome.

Want it faster? Don't use X .

Sorry for double post but I figured I'd answer this question, I was using Arch Linux i686 on my Pentium 4, I doubt the hard drive was faster than my current laptop, as the computer was made in 2001.

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~trc

broch

Banned

From: L.A. California

Registered: 2006-11-13

Posts: 975

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

yes,
28s is not very fast. But it is not very slow either.
I have 4yrs old laptop HP dv5000/2GB RAM/HDD5400rmp/nvidia Go7400/KDE: 15s boot time (bootchart) to KDM + 15s DE loading=30s total
netbook anything between 10s-15s (bootchart) with KDE - Toshiba n305-410 (to KDM + 7s DE loading=22s total

Yes, Arch is getting slower and slower (boot time). readahead is old myth. Tested many times, no real effect on boot time. In fact it can slow down boot time tremendously (complains on Ubuntu forums) some hardware setups.

mostly problems are related to rc.sysinit that can be tweaked, you can also get something out from customized kernel. Also tweaking DE and running daemons will help.

However, suspending to disk/RAM is better way of getting arch up and running in very short time.
auto mounting ntfs slows down system. You can mount it on-demand, unless you need NTFS partition always available.

Last edited by broch (2010-11-09 17:40:30)

edward.taylor89

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2010-10-21

Posts: 34

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

These are some of the ways which can help you reduce the time it takes between GRUB and the DM.

1. Append 'fastboot' in the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst

-->This enables asynchronous startup, which can slash one second(or a tad more) off your boot time, However this is known to break the arch boot process on some machines.

2. Ascertain irrelevant HOOKS from mkinitcpio.conf which you can subsequently remove. Also, set the compression method of your kernel image to lzma, which has the greatest compression ratio of the three available formats. This should reduce the time it takes for your HDD to read the image, as it is compressed to a smaller size, at the price of more CPU. The trade-off is worth it, as a 5400RPM HDD is the performance bottleneck for most laptops. 

3. You could try quick-init from the AUR.

4. Use a lightweight DM like Slim.

5. Use a kernel, optimised with patchsets.

My laptop is nearly 5 years old(from the date of purchase of course). GRUB to GDM takes 20s without options 3, 4, and 5.

I had an obsession with reducing boot-time for Arch on my desktop many months ago... and I do think I've lost count on how many times I've had to chroot from the LiveCD to fix my system haha :S

I've managed 10s between GRUB to Slim(from18s), with the help of quick-init, having no identifiable consequences to my system.

Last edited by edward.taylor89 (2010-11-09 18:07:57)

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thestinger

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Toronto, Canada

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 478

Re: Really slow boot-time, any help?

I'm confused, according to the HAL wiki, the HAL daemon should still be in rc.conf when using dbus unless the wiki is outdated?

dbus doesn't require hal, hal requires dbus and starts it.

You just need dbus in the DAEMONS array, and dbus will start udisks, upower, etc. by itself when they are needed.

evdev and udev handle all input devices without hal since xorg-server 1.8.

According to the HAL page:
Currently, a small number of programs still rely on and use HAL, though development is heading toward utilizing udev as a replacement in the near future.

You basically only need HAL for KDE apps (but not for very much longer) and some applications still use it for automounting (instead of using udisks).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg <- See here