Increasing bootup speed

jinn · 2005-12-22 19:28:58

Ive noticed that my kernel tries to find scsi cards , raid cards and whole lot of other hardware that doesnt exist on this laptop.. this is the main cause of the damn slow boot.. how do I remove these? I think I'll just compile my own kernel and get rid of all this junk...

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-22 20:09:58

Yep, ReiserFS journal replay takes a while for large volumes.

Snarkout · 2005-12-22 21:11:10

jinn wrote:

Ive noticed that my kernel tries to find scsi cards , raid cards and whole lot of other hardware that doesnt exist on this laptop.. this is the main cause of the damn slow boot.. how do I remove these? I think I'll just compile my own kernel and get rid of all this junk...

Sounds like initrd is loading every module in the book. My boot time nearly doubled after upgrading to the latest kernel. So far, I've been too lazy to hack at my /etc/mkinitrd.conf file and fix things up.

Stalwart · 2005-12-25 19:00:47

I am using custom archck kernel

Zanton · 2005-12-26 12:58:49

I made some new modifications (I wrote about it in another post) and now, I'm booting in 18s. Config : P4 3.2, 1 Go, 160 Go.
I have noticed than Reiserfs fsck takes a long time too, about 6-7s, and since I now use ext3 for my partitions, I just not mount the partitions in reiserfs from my Gentoo. I @ed all my processes except the one for gdm and I parallelize some processus in /etc/rc.sysinit. I do not have access to my computer now but in two days, I can post my config if someone is interested in looking what I have modified.

FoPref · 2005-12-28 02:11:31

Hi,

according to bootchart, my system (rather old hardware) boots in 16 seconds:

First run: http://fopref.meinungsverstaerker.de/div/bootchart1.png
Second run: http://fopref.meinungsverstaerker.de/div/bootchart2.png

This is my /etc/rc.conf: http://fopref.meinungsverstaerker.de/div/rc.conf

I have a custom kernel and am running on a raid system (/ raid 0, /home, /usr etc raid 5). I use softwaresuspend therefor I have all these modules I load on startup, because when I resume the kernel startup costs more time than reloading the mem image.

These are my specs (rather outdated system):
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1900+
cpu MHz : 1600.341
RAM: 512 MB single bank
Board: the cheapest shit they had
Disk: 3 x Seagate, Timing buffered disk reads: 146 MB in 3.01 seconds = 48.56 MB/sec

I could shoot hwclock down as I use ntpdate to gain that second where it does nothing(?) but who cares, I suspend/resume everytime anyway (its even faster!)

Regards,
Johannes

p.s.: I don't use gdm as I have no reason for it. After I login, X is started automatically (.bashrc script for that see wiki)

B15HOP · 2005-12-28 16:54:28

I just did a few things, now when I restart I'll see if I get a few increases in speed.

(talking to a thorough bred speed fr33k here, ie italian)

xerxes2 · 2005-12-30 22:21:01

i've been running initng on my laptop a few days now and there were a few problems with it that is fixed on svn now. there are at least five guys with commiting access to svn so if you go to #initng it's very likely that your fixes will be added right away. they also have a '#ifd arch' so even arch specific stuff could go in.

if you install initng from svn there still are a few things you must do manually:

1. add 'init=/sbin/initng' to the kernel line in menu.lst
2. change 'vc/%n' to 'tty%n' in udev.rules (line 102)
3. change 'vc/x' to 'ttyx' in inittab
4. put your modules in /etc/modules
5. put your hostname in /etc/conf.d/hostname like HOSTNAME="localhost"
6. put your keymap in /etc/conf.d/keymaps like KEYMAP="svorak'
7. put your services in /etc/initng/default.runlevel like 'daemon/dhcpcd/eth0'

ok, i think that's all. now it's just to reboot and pray. if that doesn't work you should keep your arch cd nearbye just in case. 8)

FoPref · 2005-12-31 09:15:52

What's the main benefit of initng? Is it really faster on Arch (benchmarkable == bootstat?).. other reasons?

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-31 19:39:18

The benefit is that it's a bit better at loading daemons in parallel.

BTW, I've just noticed that the filesystem you use can impact boot time a lot, and in more ways than just fsck time. If I use JFS, udev takes about 5 seconds to start; if I use ext3 (with dir_index, as always), it takes less than 1 second.

(Perhaps that's because of the noatime option?)

B15HOP · 2005-12-31 19:44:49

Yes, I use ex3, so I am guessing that is why my system boots in about 21 seconds. (trying not to boast too much)

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-31 20:04:12

With dir_index?

(If you use ext3 without directory indexing it is slow as hell.)

B15HOP · 2005-12-31 20:21:30

How do I find out if I have dir_index?

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-31 20:52:05

If you let the installation scripts do the formatting, you don't have it. If you did the formatting yourself, and specified directory indexing like so:

mke2fs -j -O dir_index /dev/hdXY

Then you've got it.

Refer to this thread for more. It is possible to convert an ordinary ext3 FS into a directory indexed one, but you have to fsck it after making the change.

(And be weary of full journalling. It won't hurt read times, but all writes will take twice as long.)

xerxes2 · 2005-12-31 21:06:12

FoPref wrote:

What's the main benefit of initng? Is it really faster on Arch (benchmarkable == bootstat?).. other reasons?

as Gullible said above, initng loads services in parallell and lets you specify the exact behaviour. initng is a complete drop-in replacement for other boot systems with its own initscripts.

on my xp1800 laptop it's almost 10 s faster than arch so on a newer box you may only gain around 5 s. initng works something like @ in arch but is even more advanced than that. it also lets you specify which services depends on what.

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-31 21:11:43

Can it have services depend on modules?

xerxes2 · 2005-12-31 21:18:42

hmm, good question Gullible. i'll ask the devs about it.

Edit: #initng is dead atm but if i may guess it's not possible to do it though.
Edit2: ok, i got an answer that it can do that but i'm not sure if you mean the exact same thing though.

Arch Linux

#26 2005-12-22 19:28:58

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#27 2005-12-22 20:09:58

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#28 2005-12-22 21:11:10

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#29 2005-12-25 19:00:47

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#30 2005-12-26 12:58:49

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#31 2005-12-28 02:11:31

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#32 2005-12-28 16:54:28

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#33 2005-12-30 22:21:01

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#34 2005-12-31 09:15:52

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#35 2005-12-31 19:39:18

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#36 2005-12-31 19:44:49

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#37 2005-12-31 20:04:12

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#38 2005-12-31 20:21:30

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#39 2005-12-31 20:52:05

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#40 2005-12-31 21:06:12

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#41 2005-12-31 21:11:43

Re: Increasing bootup speed

#42 2005-12-31 21:18:42

Re: Increasing bootup speed

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