Boot faster? ideas and questions

syadnom · Guru Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 531

i have an idea that i have functional on my system right now.

here it is.

i made a new startup and shutdown script that does things in parallel.

/etc/conf.d/customstartstop
then i add
/etc/conf.d/customstartstop to /etc/conf.d/local.start and local.stop

anything i have startup with customstartstop will also be shutdown properly. i have a number of things starting/stopping line this right now like:

esound &
gpm &
hotplug &
lisa &
nvtv &
samba &
distccd &
cupsd &
etc.

it works well for anything that doesnt have any boottime dependancies. it decreased my boot time by 5 seconds.

my question is, is it possible to add some sort of dependancy requierement to a local.start script?

like:
wait "net.eth0" /etc/init.d/samba
to make sure that samba doesn't try to start until eth0 is up?

syadnom · Guru Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 531

anything to get linux to boot faster, any other ideas?

puggy · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 9:08 am Post subject:

The aforementioned script can be found here. Feedback on that thread also here please.

Puggy
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pjp · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 3:50 pm Post subject:

I try to shutdown as infrequently as possible. Otherwise, I don't think the wait is long. If I'm not mistaken, kernel modules slow down boot time.

Safrax · Guru Joined: 23 Apr 2002 Posts: 419

I've personally taken to hacking the bootscripts. /sbin/rc is one of the slower ones and with modifications basically commenting out unneeded if statements and if something will always be true, etc has really helped. I've also removed various boot scripts and combined them with others and used the "&" to parrallise (sp? word?) the scripts even more. From the point at which the kernel hands things over to the gentoo scripts it takes roughly 3 seconds to get a login prompt.

puggy · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 5:11 pm Post subject:

I generally occupy myself with getting some breakfast when my computer is powering on. Problem solved. And I don't ever need to reboot normally so I just power up in the morning and shutdown at night...

I can't believe boot time is a real issue for anyone unless it takes a really long time or they crash frequently, in which case they should fix their machine so it stops crashing... :-D

Puggy
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aethyr · Veteran Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 1085 Location: NYC

Puggy, I don't think it's a big issue on desktops or servers.

But when I used to use a laptop for my job, I know the boot times would get a bit annoying. I know if I ever get a personal laptop in the future I'd appreciate booting in as little time as possible.

puggy · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 5:58 pm Post subject:

Ian · l33t Joined: 28 Oct 2002 Posts: 820 Location: Newport, RI

Well, if you want us to figure out how to decrease boot times, you could just get us all some nice new laptops...

puggy · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 6:26 pm Post subject:

ebrostig · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 6:48 pm Post subject:

I personally don't care how long it takes to boot. I only reboot after adding a new kernel, else the machines are always on.

Erik
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wilburpan · l33t Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 977

puggy · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 9:35 pm Post subject:

ebrostig · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 11:02 pm Post subject:

Safrax · Guru Joined: 23 Apr 2002 Posts: 419

Loke · Apprentice Joined: 25 May 2002 Posts: 274 Location: Norway

I see alot of comments here saying "How can you be bothered with long boot time?" etc. This really makes me wonder: Exactly why is it a good thing if boot time takes a long time? If all of you comment on why one would want shorter boot time, I ask why not if its possible?

I for one wouldnt mind a boot time of 1~2 sec but I see that is unrealistic with the current situation

tam · Guru Joined: 04 Mar 2003 Posts: 569 Location: freiburg.de

When I have finished work, I only close the lid of my notebook to suspend. When I open the lid to start it's ready in 2 secs.

syadnom · Guru Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 531

i'm hopefull that kernel 2.6 will improve boot times as it increases in version number. Some things can be run in parallel that are not, such as kernel drivers. Most kernel drivers do not have dependancies on other drivers, yet they are loaded in sequence where they could be parallel.

im wondering if it might be faster in some circumstances to load nearly everything as modules and to use an init script instead of modules.autoload to load them in parallel/background.

im building a new "test" system right now and i think ill test this theory out.

I'll need to build a list of things that MUST be compiled in. I dont think an init.ramdisk is a good idea for this so bootime filesystems is a must.

i will give it a shot. see what happens

paulisdead · Guru Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 510 Location: Seattle, WA

I think this may have been put in the default /etc/conf.d/rc file, but if it's not, add it to the end of it

RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP="yes"

that should make it so init scripts keep loading and don't wait for others unless necassary. One thing that helps for me, is to start the net.eth0 script in the boot runlevel, so I have an IP by the time other scripts like fam and portmap come up, and you don't have to wait.
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Loke · Apprentice Joined: 25 May 2002 Posts: 274 Location: Norway

syadnom · Guru Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 531

loke, gimme an example of your "&" placement in the init.d files please..

syadnom · Guru Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 531

paulisdead, do you know if add this:

RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP="yes"

will function on all of the init scripts?

im wondering if this will void the usefullness of adding & in the init.d scripts themselves.

im done building the base of my new gentoo system. on Sunday i will do some benchmarking of init script mods and hopefully get some numbers up, then im going to play with some kernel modules and see if i can load most of those in paralell.

im thinking of makeing a modules init.d script for boottime to load everything in parallel, this will give me that ability to have dependancies i think. Im not a guru with init.d scripts so ill need some help their. Im going to run through some of the gentoo docs on the init system.

I'm having some fun with this script, hopefully we can get this somewhere near usefull for the majority of users and get a rc-optimizer script in portage

====

anyone know how to get an acurate time from kernel load to prompt without using a stopwatch?

paulisdead · Guru Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 510 Location: Seattle, WA

It seems to act as if & were placed in the init scripts with that option enabled, at least for me. I'm not too familiar on the exact particulars on how this works, but on my system I can see it skip past services that I know can't startup that quick and say they started OK, but will wait if something requires that service. Shaved off a good few seconds to my boot time. The big thing was using Parrallel startup and moving net.eth0 to the boot runlevel instead of default, this way it can request the IP, keep starting other services, and by the time I'd need net.eth0 to be running for other scripts it'd be ready.

Found this in another thread a couple months back, but can't seem to find it now. Though no in depth explanation was given as to what this option does other than the obvious.
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syadnom · Guru Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 531

again, anyone know how to time bootup accurately instead of just using a stopwatch?

Peaceable Frood · Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2003 4:04 am Post subject:

My boot time is pretty quick, about 6 -7 secs with GUI too, I made all my device drivers modules, as well as win file systems, like vfat and ntfs. I had to reboot one day, and I was talking to someone who needed to use windows, they've never used Windows, before. I came back online about 9 secs, and they asked me if I rebooted yet. I'm not loading a whole lot, I haven't gotten grub or samba. I don't imagine it being much slower.
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