I am impressed!

Barrucadu · 2008-09-30 19:12:46

I just did what I thought was impossible, I reduced my boot time by 15 seconds without touching the kernel! I now boot in 17 seconds, GRUB to GDM. I detailed what I did in my blog, for anyone who cares to look: http://blog.barrucadu.co.uk/2008/09/speed-up-arch/

haxit · 2008-09-30 19:26:37

Great guide. I will give it a try.

cardinals_fan · 2008-09-30 19:41:31

You might want to consider using Slim instead of GDM.

whargoul · 2008-09-30 19:42:42

Great guide, but you don't even need the sata hook in the initramfs image. And, if remember correctly, it is better to put /var/lib/pacman on a seperate partition with ReiserFS.

haxit · 2008-09-30 19:45:09

My network didn't load

Anyways, only 1 sec difference for me ;P

smakked · 2008-09-30 20:35:51

Nice guide, altho my self hardly ever turn my PC of so it doesnt really matter. UPTIME FTW!!!

.:B:. · 2008-09-30 21:08:57

I am running standard initscripts and already fork a lot of services into the background within the DAEMONS=() array. It's already booting darn fast (20s or less even).

Cardinals_fan: SLiM is a lot more lightweight than GDM (I use it too), but I think GDM is slightly quicker at starting up. Maybe it's just my impression, I know restarting SLiM can take ages...

smakked wrote:

Nice guide, altho my self hardly ever turn my PC of so it doesnt really matter. UPTIME FTW!!!

Software suspend ftw

Last edited by B (2008-09-30 21:13:18)

Misfit138 · 2008-09-30 21:12:47

B wrote:

I am running standard initscripts and already fork a lot of services into the background within the DAEMONS=() array. It's already booting darn fast (20s or less even).
Cardinals_fan: SLiM is a lot more lightweight than GDM (I use it too), but I think GDM is slightly quicker at starting up. Maybe it's just my impression, I know restarting SLiM can take ages...

IIRC this is a bug..particularly if running SLiM as a daemon.....
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought I remembered something like this being mentioned here.

Barrucadu · 2008-09-30 21:15:51

B wrote:

I am running standard initscripts and already fork a lot of services into the background within the DAEMONS=() array. It's already booting darn fast (20s or less even).

I've never had a boot time of less than 27 seconds without fiddling, things really can vary a lot across different systems.

I don't think I'll be changing anything else, 17 seconds is good enough for me; 32 seconds was a bit too slow as I use this laptop in school - especially so if you take the time before bootchart kicks in, and the time to log in into account.

Last edited by Barrucadu (2008-09-30 21:18:31)

.:B:. · 2008-09-30 21:16:02

I know it hanging while restarting is a bug - well, at least it definitely looks like one. You sometimes (often) really need to kill the program to get it to respawn. Not sure how active SLiM development is nowadays, I was hunting for a PPC patch the other day that was reported to be on their bugtracker to solve a PPC-specific compilation problem, but couldn't find anything. In the end I used a third-party solution. Then again, I find sourceforge's interface to be a bit cumbersome .

Barracuda: I agree. Although mine is a laptop (and present boot times are particularly fast in that regard already), I think my SSD makes a difference at startup (even though it's a rather slow one). I also run my own kernel but I don't think it takes that much time off, it's more for kicks and giggles .

Last edited by B (2008-09-30 21:21:02)

moljac024 · 2008-09-30 22:47:50

Yes, slim takes about twice as much time to start opposed to gdm here.

Btw Barrucadu, nice idea about speeding up GDM - I, too, was annoyed with the 2 second console login visible. I've tried doing it your way but GDM just spits out an error about auth file not being in /var/lib or something like that

orasis · 2008-10-01 05:16:16

Nice little tweaks but .. my Arch box rarely gets shutdown save for Kernel updates and the occasional power outage from a storm or something.

Arkane · 2008-10-01 08:11:11

I tried the GDM part, but GDM started with the default theme and configuration instead of my custom ones, without giving me any error output. Any idea about what this means?

Barrucadu · 2008-10-01 15:43:01

Arkane wrote:

I tried the GDM part, but GDM started with the default theme and configuration instead of my custom ones, without giving me any error output. Any idea about what this means?

That happens randomly for me, I'm yet to figure out why. It's generally fine the next boot or so.

moljac024 wrote:

Btw Barrucadu, nice idea about speeding up GDM - I, too, was annoyed with the 2 second console login visible. I've tried doing it your way but GDM just spits out an error about auth file not being in /var/lib or something like that

Not sure how to fix that, sorry. Try moving the bit of code to below "Mounting Local Filesystems".

archdave · 2008-10-01 21:47:28

The problem with making changes such as these is every time Arch updates initscripts your have to re-implement these changes. Saving 15 secs on a boot is not worth my time to have to maintain it.

Especially considering time between reboots with linux.

Barrucadu · 2008-10-01 21:52:02

Of course, you could just never update the initscripts.

dsr · 2008-10-02 02:32:30

Good tips. I have my /var partition formatted as ReiserFS, and it doesn't seem noticeably faster than when it was ext3. Maybe I should just reformat everything to JFS other than /boot.

As for speeding up login managers like GDM and SLiM, just get rid of them. Add

if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/vc/1 ]]; then
    startx
    logout
fi

to your ~/.bash_profile and startx will be called when you login from the console. It feels so much snappier

moljac024 · 2008-10-02 10:03:00

dsr wrote:

Good tips. I have my /var partition formatted as ReiserFS, and it doesn't seem noticeably faster than when it was ext3. Maybe I should just reformat everything to JFS other than /boot.
As for speeding up login managers like GDM and SLiM, just get rid of them. Add
if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/vc/1 ]]; then
    startx
    logout
fi
to your ~/.bash_profile and startx will be called when you login from the console. It feels so much snappier

I'm actually considering this...

haxit · 2008-10-02 19:20:22

moljac024 wrote:

dsr wrote:
Good tips. I have my /var partition formatted as ReiserFS, and it doesn't seem noticeably faster than when it was ext3. Maybe I should just reformat everything to JFS other than /boot.
As for speeding up login managers like GDM and SLiM, just get rid of them. Add
if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/vc/1 ]]; then
    startx
    logout
fi
to your ~/.bash_profile and startx will be called when you login from the console. It feels so much snappier
I'm actually considering this...

I have that, and I love it

moljac024 · 2008-10-02 20:21:43

haxit wrote:

moljac024 wrote:
dsr wrote:
Good tips. I have my /var partition formatted as ReiserFS, and it doesn't seem noticeably faster than when it was ext3. Maybe I should just reformat everything to JFS other than /boot.
As for speeding up login managers like GDM and SLiM, just get rid of them. Add
if [[ -z "$DISPLAY" ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/vc/1 ]]; then
    startx
    logout
fi
to your ~/.bash_profile and startx will be called when you login from the console. It feels so much snappier
I'm actually considering this...
I have that, and I love it

Made the switch. It's great
Of course, I'm using xinit since it's way faster to start than startx.

Last edited by moljac024 (2008-10-02 20:22:47)

RobertoVanto · 2008-10-02 20:29:08

Booting GNU/Linux in 5 seconds: http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/

haxit · 2008-10-02 20:43:05

RobertoVanto wrote:

Booting GNU/Linux in 5 seconds: http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/

That is crazy.

dsr · 2008-10-02 21:19:07

haxit: I wonder how many users of display managers we can get to convert...

moljac024 wrote:

Of course, I'm using xinit since it's way faster to start than startx.

I never realized that, but I just tried it, and you're right. Thanks!

haxit · 2008-10-02 22:01:08

dsr wrote:

haxit: I wonder how many users of display managers we can get to convert...
moljac024 wrote:
Of course, I'm using xinit since it's way faster to start than startx.
I never realized that, but I just tried it, and you're right. Thanks!

Lets start a rally!!
Also, I just started using xinit I love it already

Berseker · 2008-10-09 16:35:53

I've tried your suggestions, and in effect i had a reduced boot time from 39 to ~22.. but in bundle with that, the system didn't load my system settings from rc.conf, no language, no hostname, the network was down, no acpi, no X started.. maybe I'll give it a try another time, when I'll have more time to spend with that.

Arch Linux

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I am impressed!

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