Arch Linux

jackpot

Member

From: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Registered: 2014-08-18

Posts: 86

Extremely slow boot time on fresh install (Cinnamon + GDM)

Hi,

I have a fresh installation of Arch with Cinnamon + GDM taking about 2 minutes and 30 seconds (observed manually) from Grub menu to loading of desktop in usable condition.

It's installed on external USB drive. Although the hardware is old but rebooted within 15 seconds in VM on internal HD drive with same Cinnamon and SDDM.

Details are:

#1. Hardware info:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+ x 2
Memory 2.7 GB
Hard drive 149.4 GB
GPU : nVidia Corp; GT 218 [GeForce 210]
USB wi-fi card
Arch vanilla kernel: 3.17.2-1

Problems:
a) Delay during loading of kernel modules,
b) Extreme delay in loading of display manager for login, and
c) Delay in loading of desktop.

I followed these guides:

Maximizing performance
Improve boot performance

Did not find any relevant tip to fix problems.

#2. systemd-analyze

Startup finished in 16.354s (kernel) + 10.182s (userspace) = 26.536s

It's wrong.

#3.  systemd-analyze blame

          4.151s wpa_supplicant.service
          4.048s NetworkManager.service
          1.623s colord.service
          1.479s accounts-daemon.service
           912ms systemd-logind.service
           886ms gdm.service
           679ms polkit.service
           571ms user@120.service
           548ms dev-hugepages.mount
           547ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
           524ms tmp.mount
           512ms udisks2.service
           475ms sys-kernel-config.mount
           448ms dev-mqueue.mount
           435ms systemd-remount-fs.service
           423ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
           409ms systemd-vconsole-setup.service
           349ms systemd-fsck@dev-sdb4.service
           330ms systemd-sysctl.service
           258ms kmod-static-nodes.service
           254ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
           242ms upower.service
           240ms systemd-journal-flush.service
           218ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
           200ms rtkit-daemon.service
           150ms systemd-random-seed.service
           129ms home.mount
           108ms systemd-user-sessions.service
            94ms dev-sdb3.swap
            88ms systemd-rfkill@rfkill0.service
            64ms systemd-update-utmp.service
            60ms systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
            39ms user@1001.service
            27ms systemd-udevd.service
             4ms sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount

Seems no problem.

#4. dmesg

Complete : http://pastebin.com/w7sXtuKh

Extract : Based on what I think adds delay

[   22.277994] systemd-journald[138]: Received request to flush runtime journal from PID 1
[   26.674187] r8169 0000:02:0f.0 enp2s15: link down
[   26.674207] r8169 0000:02:0f.0 enp2s15: link down
[   26.674267] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): enp2s15: link is not ready
[   26.700183] ieee80211 phy0: rt2x00lib_request_firmware: Info - Loading firmware file 'rt2870.bin'
[   26.729912] ieee80211 phy0: rt2x00lib_request_firmware: Info - Firmware detected - version: 0.29
[   27.117488] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlp0s19f5u3: link is not ready
[   53.360188] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: irq 25 for MSI/MSI-X
[   53.951157] NVRM: Your system is not currently configured to drive a VGA console
[   53.951164] NVRM: on the primary VGA device. The NVIDIA Linux graphics driver
[   53.951167] NVRM: requires the use of a text-mode VGA console. Use of other console
[   53.951170] NVRM: drivers including, but not limited to, vesafb, may result in
[   53.951172] NVRM: corruption and stability problems, and is not supported.
[   58.436865] wlp0s19f5u3: authenticate with 00:1f:fb:39:4c:24
[   58.467542] wlp0s19f5u3: send auth to 00:1f:fb:39:4c:24 (try 1/3)
[   58.469250] wlp0s19f5u3: authenticated
[   58.469512] rt2800usb 2-3:1.0 wlp0s19f5u3: disabling HT/VHT due to WEP/TKIP use
[   58.470040] wlp0s19f5u3: associate with 00:1f:fb:39:4c:24 (try 1/3)
[   58.478853] wlp0s19f5u3: RX AssocResp from 00:1f:fb:39:4c:24 (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=3)
[   58.485469] wlp0s19f5u3: associated
[   58.485510] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlp0s19f5u3: link becomes ready
[   58.485555] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
[   70.688882] fuse init (API version 7.23)
[  283.405686] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain

#5. Important observation:
hdparm -t reports 13.54 mb /sec reads for the external drive I am using for this installation. I don't face lag or slowness after boot including another distro installed on this drive had this problem.

Please help in further analyzing and fixing this problem.

Thanks!

---

KDE is all good bloated, try to trim away from K*.apps... whatever it leaves behind equals "Kuck yourself!"
nVidia.... fsck sdy0

Kopkins

Member

Registered: 2012-07-01

Posts: 189

Re: Extremely slow boot time on fresh install (Cinnamon + GDM)

How fast does it boot to a tty? Disable gdm and boot to a tty. See if that is any faster than starting gdm. Gdm takes a while to start up if I run it on my computer and I have an SSD. But it will add several seconds to my boot time which from systemd-analyze is 9 seconds.

So, boot to a tty and use startx to start the session and see if it's any faster. 13MB/s seems like a pretty tight bottleneck for starting big applications like gdm and a desktop environment. I run a pretty simple openbox setup as my environment and it only uses 150 MB of memory after I startx. But if I could only load 13 MB /s from memory it would add another 11 seconds to the time it took me to startx.

So see how fast you can boot, and then see how fast you can load your desktop using startx. When I booted an install media of arch on an old computer with usb2 it took about 10 minutes to get everything going.

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: Extremely slow boot time on fresh install (Cinnamon + GDM)

What does your /var/log/Xorg.0.log say? It appears to be more of an "X' slowdown to me, or at least nVidia and also loading your wireless profile?? Check Xorg first...

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Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: Extremely slow boot time on fresh install (Cinnamon + GDM)

FWIW: Before I left Gnome early this year, GDM was a SLOW BEAST when starting up. Try Kopkins' suggestion.

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Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

jackpot

Member

From: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Registered: 2014-08-18

Posts: 86

Re: Extremely slow boot time on fresh install (Cinnamon + GDM)

Sorry for late response.

How fast does it boot to a tty? Disable gdm and boot to a tty.

Disabled GDM, rebooted and it took about 35 seconds to drop me to shell. Major bottlenecks were at below and then fsck (about 25 seconds).

[    3.287955]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4
[    3.303307] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[   14.788713] end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0

I'll check bios settings to disable floppy, wasting 11 per dmesg with other few seconds going to nVidia and wireless card topped up by slow drive affecting overall boot time. Desktop however works fine (and is snappy) so probably I'll wait until I change drive for good.

Thanks for input everyone..

---

KDE is all good bloated, try to trim away from K*.apps... whatever it leaves behind equals "Kuck yourself!"
nVidia.... fsck sdy0