[8.04] Boot times

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2manydjs

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The boot time straight after installation was 1 min 25 sec. After tweaking I got it down to 55 seconds, which is still not impressive..
What I have changed:

- change filesystem from ext3 to ext2 (BTW I didn't have a .journal file on my machine, is that normal?)
- change relatime into noatime (/etc/fstab)
- added elevator=noop to /boot/grub/menu.lst
- installed preloader
- added the tmpfs entries to /etc/fstab
- auto login

My next step would be to compile a kernel.
What else can I change?

For more info:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=9190
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linu ... evert.html
http://www.array.org/ubuntu/
 
What does elevator=noop in menu.lst (I use it myself but am still curious) and preloader do?
 
einarth said:
What does elevator=noop in menu.lst (I use it myself but am still curious) and preloader do?
Click to expand...
By default, Linux uses an “elevator” so that platter reads and writes are done in an orderly and sequential matter. Since an SSD is not a conventional disk, the “elevator” scheduler actually gets in the way. By adding elevator=noop to your kernel boot parameters in your /boot/grub/menu.lst file, you will greatly improve read and write performance on your SSD.
Click to expand...
preload will determine these are common applications and will keep the libraries in your RAM
Click to expand...
 
Do you have some further information about preloader? Especially how to acquire and configure it.
 
Preload sounds like something that would actually slow down bootup in order to gain speed advantages later.
 
I have compiled my first kernel yesterday. The boot time was decreased only minimally.. The load screen is quite a bit faster and the progress bar loads without a hiccup. The few seconds saves here are however mostly offset by the "starting up.." prompt after GRUB which takes longer than with the default kernel. I have no idea why this is. The progress bar is finished at about 25 seconds after which it's waiting until Gnome is fully loaded.. All in all my boot time is down to 49 seconds.

I will look at the suggestions given in Baseline's link. Hopefully it will speed up Gnome startup time.

--

Btw I've tested booting with and without preload, it didn't seem to have any influence on the boot time.
 
2manydjs said:
I have compiled my first kernel yesterday. The boot time was decreased only minimally.. The load screen is quite a bit faster and the progress bar loads without a hiccup. The few seconds saves here are however mostly offset by the "starting up.." prompt after GRUB which takes longer than with the default kernel. I have no idea why this is. The progress bar is finished at about 25 seconds after which it's waiting until Gnome is fully loaded.. All in all my boot time is down to 49 seconds.
Click to expand...

This is great news 2manydjs,

Tks for all the effort your putting in to this. I never seem to be able to have enough time to do a compile myself.
Regarding your login times, did you disable the kernel debug parameters?
And tks again, this is exactly the kind of effort that really brings tremendous benefits to the community.

btw. Forgot an obvious one, disable the freaking tracker indexing... How to: disable tracker by session applet (Preferences -> Session)

cheers
 
To enable processor concurrency on the boot process:

Code: 
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/rc

Look for CONCURRENCY=none and change it to:
CONCURRENCY=shell

There's a tool called "bootchart" (sudo apt-get install bootchart) that allows us to see whats really happening with the boot time. After installing it and reboot, the log is written in a png file located in /var/log/bootchart
 
Ok guys,

I did some preliminary compiles using old config, not a vanilla kernel and I'm getting about 15 seconds decrease in boot times.
The time I have for this kind of stuff is limited but I'll do some more testing and will post the results here. With any luck I will be able to provide a redistributable .deb.

cheers
 
2manydjs said:
Baseline what's your total boot time?
Click to expand...

I got it down on the first pass to about 40 seconds.
If I have time to do a vanilla compile I'm pretty sure I can decrease this even further, nowadays I just haven't got the time I used to have in my youth 8-).

cheers
 
Well, i've managed to boot in 34 seconds! It's getting better.
Checkout the bootchart log in attach. It would be nice to see more of this logs for comparison. I'm still trying to figure out that log.
We're still 15 seconds away from stock linpus :s
 
34 seconds! Pretty impressive! My goal is to eventually get it under 30 seconds.

I have set gnome to auto login. When I time the boot I stop the time at the moment I have to type the password for the "keychain"-thing (or what ever that is) at the desktop.
Does your 34 seconds include logging in?
 
2manydjs said:
34 seconds! Pretty impressive! My goal is to eventually get it under 30 seconds.

I have set gnome to auto login. When I time the boot I stop the time at the moment I have to type the password for the "keychain"-thing (or what ever that is) at the desktop.
Does your 34 seconds include logging in?
Click to expand...

I also have set autologin. I've tried to follow some guides to disable keychain asking for password (without success). Ithink it's time to digg in the kernel and lose some weight. Anyone up to it?

It would be nice to see the bootchart for the stock Linpus for comparison. Still can't quite understand all the information in the log...
 
here's mine a1 with some tweaking

hhbootchart27s.png
 
To get an extra 2-3 seconds i've found this tweak (from "Tweaking Ubuntu Ultimate"):

"This tweak will optimize the hard disk for the loading of drivers etc. for the next boot, similar to that of the windows world bootvis tool. Please note: if you upgrade your kernel / restricted drivers you will have to preform this tweak again to get it back up to par.

Hit the escape hey when booting to get to the grub menu. Select your default boot kernel and hit the "e" key Go down 1 should be you kernel options hit the "e" key again, at the end of the line type "profile" & press enter. Hit the "b" key to boot with the options set. Will be slow the first time, however the boot after that will be speed you can really feel."

This tweak improves the boot speed of Grub, by a few seconds (2-3s)

I've narrowed it down to 26 seconds. 8 seconds faster than my last report, I added "elevator=noop" to the kernel options in /boot/grub/menu.lst and did the tweak above.
 
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