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creaker
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 7:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hypnos wrote:
creaker wrote:

Regarding me, I reinstall the system if boot time exceeds 20 secs.


Please tell us you don't do this on Gentoo, when you can just use rc-update.


I do it. On Gentoo. It is not so hard and complicated as you can imagine it. I have a dedicated machine for this task, so this process doesn't interfere me to deal with other things. I doing a fresh install approx. every 2 or 3 weeks. It takes about 4 - 4.5 hours for compilation, all the configuratio files (.config, make.conf and other stuffs from /etc) are exists ready to use (copied from other gentoo box), so configuration takes a minimal amount of time.
Once system installed I testing it for a few days and moving it as stage4 to my main desktop.
Why I do not do an update? Due to two reasons.
The first reason: the series of 5,6 or 7 updates ultimately takes longer than one reinstallation.
The second reason: the series of updates ultimately gives you a more bloated and littery system than freshly installed one. I noticed that every update increases a boot time for a 2-3 secs. Regardless did I ran revdep-rebuild, rc-update and other recommended stuffs or not.
Why I need a fast boot? I have a number of clients who call to me for support (most of them are windows users) so I have to reboot to windows as well, and it would be ass pain to wait for a 4 minutes while machine would be rebooted.

---
krinn wrote:
creaker wrote:
When someone says that there is no need for quick booting, and uptime is the most important thing
Regarding me, I reinstall the system if boot time exceeds 20 secs.


My system need 4+ minutes to boot (estimate time, i never really count ; mostly eaten when loading my card raid kernel, discover, check and assemble arrays), so yes my system uptime is important for me, more than my boot time.
I have never be in needs to reinstall my system, in fact my gentoo install experience is limited to 18-20 times, the hosts i have install gentoo on.

And your health indicator is strange : so a system that is in a reboot loop... is healthy if it take 5s between each attempt ?

If you have to wait for a 4+ mins for booting, probably something wrong on your side. Hardware fault? Outdated hardware? Genkerneled kernel + all the possible USE flags enabled?
I would have smashed my box, if it loaded 4 minutes :twisted:
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creaker
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 7:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hypnos wrote:
rudregues wrote:
[ironic]Another good way would be systemd in parallel mode.[/ironic]

Yeah it's like the fat man running up many staircases at once!


Stumbles, falls, gets up and runs again :D
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Hypnos
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 7:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

creaker wrote:
The second reason: the series of updates ultimately gives you a more bloated and littery system than freshly installed one. I noticed that every update increases a boot time for a 2-3 secs.

The point of Gentoo is that there is no magic. If something does not function as intended, there's a reason. And Gentoo/Linux provide the tools to understand the problem -- OpenRC settings, rc-update, logs in /var/log, etc.

My own system has been perfectly stable since 2009 with weekly updates, including consistent boot performance. There's something seriously wrong with your setup.
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Anon-E-moose
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 9:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

creaker wrote:
Boot time is an indicator of the health of your system.


Yes, if you measure your system against your system, with no hardware changes.
It could also mean that one has misconfigured their system.

It means nothing when measured against anyone elses system.

Quote:
I noticed that every update increases a boot time for a 2-3 secs.


I've never seen that.
I suppose you could get that if you constantly change kernels or maybe glibc or add new rc init processes.
But I would expect that and not changing those it should be consistent.
If it happens because you updated gcc, X, or any number of other things then something is wrong with your system.

In other words barring changes added above, if it booted in 5 seconds
when I installed these things, it should boot in 5-6 seconds
until I change kernel, glibc or add new rc init processes.

If it's doing something different, then perhaps the problem lies elsewhere than just "updates".

Quote:
The second reason: the series of updates ultimately gives you a more bloated and littery system than freshly installed one.


I haven't found that to be true on my system. I even uninstall pkgs that I haven't used in the last 6 months to a year.
I don't keep useless things around, I don't have my system loaded with things I never use.


But if you want to spend your time constantly reloading your system, it's your system, have at it.
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creaker
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 7:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@ Hypnos & Anon-E-moose
Nothing wrong with my config and setup.

You can't to get the same boot time after update because:

a) Developers and maintainers are people, and people are fallible. They need a lot of factors to take into account when they prepare new versions of software. It is much more easy to adopt new version of software to well known and standardized stage3 than to deal with a huge amount of custom heterogeneous configurations. In the latter case, the probability of errors and inconsistencies (due to versions mismatching e.t.c.) significantly higher. So, the system that was freshly installed from stage3 priory better configured than updated one (with other things being equal - USE flags, software and hardware set and so on). Better configured system shows better performance.

b) On every update the files needed for boot becomes further apart on a disk due to impossibility to put new version exactly to the same place at disk surface where old one located. This leads to the fact that it takes more time to navigate to the location of the newly installed file. After a number of updates, the files needed for boot are scattered over the entire disc surface. Unlike of updated, freshly installed system has these files located much more compactly. Given that the search and read the files is the slowest operation during boot, it becomes clear why updated system slower than freshly installed. Therefore, programs that optimize the boot process (e.g. e4-rat), try to move the files needed for boot as close as possible to each other in order to read all of them at one head move.

Thus, it becomes clear why the system installed 10 years ago and has survived hundreds of updates, takes 4 minutes for boot.
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gerard27
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 8:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@creaker,
You're talking about fragmentation.
A quicker way to combat this is to copy / to an external HD.
Then format the partition and put everything back in.
Of course if you have /usr and /var on separate partitions they should get the same treatment.
This way your install will be exactly what it was,yet with all files neatly arranged.
Should take less time and hassle than a complete reinstall.
Gerard.
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Anon-E-moose
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 8:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

creaker wrote:
@ Hypnos & Anon-E-moose
Nothing wrong with my config and setup.

You can't to get the same boot time after update because:


I like a lot of what you write, but in this case...both those reasons are mostly bogus, IMO

In the first, I compile and tune my packages for my hardware, something that isn't possible with stage 3/4 designed for the world tarballs.

In the second....
Can fragmentation happen, sure, but I've not seen a problem on my system.
I think part of that might be filesystem related, I run reiser 3 and don't have slowdown problems.

And as gerard82 says, you can always copy, clean and copy back...magically unfragmented.

Though I've had to wipe root and load it from a backup a few times
and I personally have never seen a boot or runtime speedup or slowdown from it.
So again, I've not personally seen what you claim.
That doesn't mean what you say isn't correct...for you.
But on the other hand I wouldn't call it a general truth either.

Anyway, I won't belabor the point anymore, if it makes your system faster to reinstall it every so often, then do so.

Edit to add: I just checked fragmentation on root and it showed "0% non contiguous files"
This is after months of normal upgrades.


Edit to add 2: Another thought.
My root is a 40 gig partition, of which only 5 gig is files.
It could be that on a much smaller partition, say 8 gig with 5 gigs of files, there could be more fragmentation.
Just a possibility.
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Last edited by Anon-E-moose on Fri Dec 20, 2013 1:30 am; edited 1 time in total
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depontius
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 12:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Boot times that just keep getting worse with time sound more like a Registry, to me.

Linux doesn't have a Registry, and I certainly hope that about the time freedesktop.org tries to give it one, Linus will give them such a dope-slap that their ears will ring right into next year.

(He's already given a mild dope-slap about the idea of adding binary logging into the kernel.)
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Anon-E-moose
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 2:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

depontius wrote:
(He's already given a mild dope-slap about the idea of adding binary logging into the kernel.)


It's interesting in that it's the usual suspects that want these things added to the kernel.

They're not satisfied in controlling the init process/system logging/kitchen sink they also want their code in the kernel. Oy Vey!
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Yamakuzure
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 9:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

gerard82 wrote:
@creaker,
You're talking about fragmentation.
A quicker way to combat this is to copy / to an external HD.
And a more quicker way for the lazy is sys-fs/shake. ;)

But really, creaker, that can't be true.
creaker wrote:
@ Hypnos & Anon-E-moose
Nothing wrong with my config and setup.
Of course it is, because ...
creaker wrote:
You can't to get the same boot time after update because:
...of course you can!

Every update costing an additional of 2-3 seconds? Then my 3 year old laptop must have a boot time of over 10 Minutes, and it boots in under 20 seconds into KDM (This laptop has seen constant updates from KDE-4.1 on) and KDE starts (with fresh and empty /var/tmp and /tmp) in under 10 seconds. Which is very fast considering the fact that I am making full usage of the whole kdepim-akonadi-semantic-desktop-bloat.

However, I used sys-fs/shake only a week ago overnight on all drives. The boot time from grub2 to KDE desktop, now ~30 seconds, was about ~45 seconds before I did that. So yes, fragmentation can be a problem.

Oh and this is a developer system with CFLAGS="-ggdb" and FEATURES="splitdebug" for everything but libreoffice and firefox. ;)
Number of packages installed:
Code:
 $ eix --only-names -I | wc -l
1563


However:
creaker wrote:
Why I need a fast boot? I have a number of clients who call to me for support (most of them are windows users) so I have to reboot to windows as well, and it would be ass pain to wait for a 4 minutes while machine would be rebooted.
If you do this for clients, then this means you earn your money with it, and that means you have a very good reason to use something like VMware Workstation instead of doing dual-booting.

I have to use Windows 7 from time to time myself, and I'd rather kill myself than do dual-booting, meaning that I have to close *everything* I am working on just for something different (and short) to do in windows.
And for remote desktop, VPN and so on, you wouldn't need windows at all. (See net-misc/vpnc and net-misc/openconnect for example)

Edit: Oh and if you think that this is not true, and that I must have a new hard drive or something like that, here is the HD data from my laptop:
Code:
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 128
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Always       -       1242
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   089   089   000    Old_age   Always       -       274259
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2342
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       50
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       29
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       42568
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       35 (Min/Max 10/51)
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       53183233
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       93637215
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0032   091   091   000    Old_age   Always       -       232644
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       19057686321
242 Total_LBAs_Read         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       16955436305
254 Free_Fall_Sensor        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       12

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creaker
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 10:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

@ Yamakuzure
When I wrote that You can't to get the same boot time after update I meant you can't get it without some special actions like shaking files with defragger or e4rat or some other similar tools. I.e. in most common update way: emerge -avuDN world + revdep-rebuild.
Yes, updated system may be even faster than freshly installed if you will make a backup, reformat partition and put manually files that needed for boot back to reformatted partition in a specific sequence, in the order that they will be loaded during boot. But it is a very special case, no one does it, and most of users even doesn't use e4rat or shake to organize a files.
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