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#1 2011-12-10 18:00:24

Morfir
Member
From: In The Valley Of The Walls
Registered: 2011-11-10
Posts: 3

Speeding up Boot Times

Hey Guys,

Just installed my first copy of Arch on my machine. I am loving it so far, especially Pacman, however I would like to see about speeding up the boot time of the machine. This is sort of a generic question but what tips/tricks do you have to speed up boot times on Arch? I'm all about speed and efficiency and it seems like it is taking a little bit longer than it should. I have already skimmed down on interfaces loading on start up, modules that are not really necessary, and killed most of my scripts that run after boot. Suggestions?

Last edited by Morfir (2011-12-10 18:01:15)


Regards,

Morfir

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#2 2011-12-10 18:18:19

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Speeding up Boot Times

Buy an SSD, try systemd maybe.


Edit: How long does it take exactly? Use bootchart to see why is it taking so long.
Have a peek https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=55302

Last edited by karol (2011-12-10 18:20:13)

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#3 2011-12-10 18:20:43

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

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#4 2011-12-10 18:21:47

b4data
Member
Registered: 2010-12-14
Posts: 141

Re: Speeding up Boot Times

Have you read this page in the wiki?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Im … erformance

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#5 2011-12-10 19:05:07

bwat47
Member
Registered: 2009-10-07
Posts: 638

Re: Speeding up Boot Times

If you are using a DE look at the session/startup settings and remove any unneeded items, background daemons in rc.conf (you might have to experiment with this, backgrounding certain daemons can cause issues. With my system I was able to background everything but dbus fine though)

The biggest improvement in boot time for me is using readahead-fedora or e4rat. e4rat will probably give you bigger improvement, but it isn't as easy and automatic as readahead fedora. A light login manager really helps too, I found GDM added quite a few seconds to my boot, using LXDM shaved quite a few seconds off. I'm able to get to a usable XFCE desktop in about 17 seconds now on a 5400rpm drive.

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#6 2011-12-10 20:37:29

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,740

Re: Speeding up Boot Times

Build yourself a custom kernel, build in all of the modules you need to boot.  Set yourself up to not use an initrd. 

Mind you, keep the stock kernel and initrd on the boot partition and keep an entry for them in your /boot/grub/menu.lst.  Add the custom kernel to the boot partition and make a new entry for it in the menu.lst file.

If you do this, make sure you set it to optimize for your specific processor.

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_Compilation
also, if you have never compiled a kernel, take a look at:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/  (No I am not joking -- Gentoo documentation on kernel compilation is unsurpassed)


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#7 2011-12-11 01:35:56

Morfir
Member
From: In The Valley Of The Walls
Registered: 2011-11-10
Posts: 3

Re: Speeding up Boot Times

@karol just ordered a ocz vertex about 3 days ago so well see how that works out.

@bwat47- Thanks this looks really interesting, I think I am going to give e4rat a go... The whole reason why I wanted to do this is so I could learn more about the system processes upon boot so I think this would be better.

@ewaller- I have never looked into building a custom kernel for myself, I am reading up on it right now and will let you know how it goes.

I actually timed my to test it to get a data table:

Trial 1- 1m 48s
Trial 2- 1m 33s
Trial 3- 1m 21s

We will see how it effects this constantly over a minute time. Thanks for all of the feedback.


Regards,

Morfir

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#8 2011-12-11 12:44:11

asipper
Member
Registered: 2011-11-24
Posts: 22

Re: Speeding up Boot Times

If you use LILO add compact to the global section

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