Arch Linux

mforce

Member

Registered: 2005-10-21

Posts: 10

kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

I just made a fresh install ( my first actually) with the latest Arch including XORG 7 m the Nvidia binary driver and KDE 3.5.1 .
 
Everything works , I'm very impressed with the Arch boot speed but there's a really big problem with KDM starting . There's a huge lag , a delay between X starting and seeing the Nvidia splash screen and KDM appearing on the desktop .

  It seems to load something from the harddrive but I don't think it should take that long . I previously never had this problem with KDE in Gentoo , Kubuntu or PCLOS ( but didn't try it with KDE 3.5.1 and Xorg 7 though ) ,
  Any ideas ?

P.S.  KDM log :

X Window System Version 7.0.0
Release Date: 21 December 2005
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 7.0
Build Operating System:Linux 2.6.15-ARCH i686
Current Operating System: Linux myhost 2.6.15-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Feb 12 18:36:42 CET 2006 i686
Build Date: 18 February 2006
    Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
    to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
    (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
    (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sat Mar  4 02:38:41 2006
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/TTF, removing from list!
kdmgreet: WARNING: KLocale: trying to look up "" in catalog. Fix the program
QSettings: error creating /tmp/2045135864/.qt
QSettings: failed to open file '/tmp/2045135864/.qt/qt_plugins_3.3rc'
QSettings::sync: filename is null/empty
QSettings: error creating /tmp/2045135864/.qt
QSettings: failed to open file '/tmp/2045135864/.qt/qt_plugins_3.3rc'
QSettings::sync: filename is null/empty
QSettings: error creating /tmp/2045135864/.qt
QSettings: failed to open file '/tmp/2045135864/.qt/qt_plugins_3.3rc'
QSettings::sync: filename is null/empty

jaboua

Member

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 634

Re: kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

install hdparm and check if DMA is on. If not, I'll post a little script you can put in /etc/rc.d to turn on DMA on boot (yes, DMA is deactivated by default here, I just get some harddrive errors in my logs...)

mforce

Member

Registered: 2005-10-21

Posts: 10

Re: kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

I checked and yes DMA is on and the mode seems to be udma6 :
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
Maybe this is just normal because I see that when I restart the X server without rebooting everything happens much faster ( probably takes everything from RAM ) .
  Still I don't really like and I'm wondering if I can't somehow speed it up .
  Could it have something to do with the fonts or the font server . Hope I'm not talking nonsense here .
  I find it very odd that it now takes that much to start x but maybe it's just because Arch boots up so fast     .

Here's a bootchart maybe it will make things clearer because I didn't understand too much from it :

nirvanix

Member

From: Saskatoon

Registered: 2005-01-31

Posts: 193

Re: kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

I've got the same problem with ATI drivers...

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I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...

mforce

Member

Registered: 2005-10-21

Posts: 10

Re: kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

Well at least I'm not the only one having problems . I think I have an idea though  , Prelinking is not going on here from what I can tell . I can remember doing some prelinking on KDE and ....  Well it's all in the lovely Gentoo documentation .
   By the way I just wanted to say that compared to the Gentoo documentation the Arch documentation simply .... how should I put this mildly .... well it just sucks big time     .
   I'll keep you posted if it works out .

DDspeed

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-03-05

Posts: 28

Website

Re: kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

I have the same problem, but with GDM, so I guess it's an X.org issue not exactly related to kdm. It started obviously after upgrading to X.org 7 .

When doing /etc/rc.d/gdm restart it works right. It seems that the problem only exists when starting/stopping the display manager for the first time from bootup.

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Have You ever been...?

archy

Member

Registered: 2006-01-17

Posts: 13

Re: kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

I'm not sure if this will fix it for anyone else, but running fc-cache -fv as root (and normal users if you have anything in your .fonts dir) fixed that issue for me.

mforce

Member

Registered: 2005-10-21

Posts: 10

Re: kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

I'm almost sure now this is an Xorg 7 thing . I'll try what archy suggested .

DDspeed

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-03-05

Posts: 28

Website

Re: kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

I'm not sure if this will fix it for anyone else, but running fc-cache -fv as root (and normal users if you have anything in your .fonts dir) fixed that issue for me.

Helped for me! Now it actually seems to start faster then on X.org 6.8 .

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Have You ever been...?

mforce

Member

Registered: 2005-10-21

Posts: 10

Re: kdm big delay with Xorg 7 & Nvidia

Yes , it did the trick for me too , thanks archy .
   Just an idea but I think this sould be added as a script to the font packages or something .
   Seems though that the Arch way is do it yourself if you want it    .
   I come from Gentoo and although it takes a very long time to compile everything in the end you can be pretty sure you have it right and the atention to datails and documentation is much greater .