(boot improvement experiments) Re: Boot poster challenge

Sat Nov 20 00:49:55 UTC 2004

Those times are really good. I think I'll start tinkering with my box
and see what it produces. But first: How do I turn on boot logging and
where is the log saved?

David

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 18:22:50 -0300, Franco Catrin <fcatrin at tuxpan.com> wrote:
> 
> Sorry to hang up on this part of the discussion, I've just subscribed
> fedora-devel because I knew there was a discussion about the boot time
> on Fedora.
> 
> I was trying to improve the boot time with FC2 some weeks ago, and I got
> very interesting results.  This is not directly related to the boot
> poster, it is just a trial and error work to improve FC2 boot time.
> 
> My machine:
> 
> P4-M 2.8Ghz HT
> 512MB RAM
> 4200RM hard disk drive (dell notebook, very slow compared to a desktop
> machine)
> Fedora Core 2 + updates
> Nvidia card with nvidia drivers
> 
> Critical times for me:
> 
> GDM: Time from GRUB until GDM gets ready to login an user
> GNOME: Time to load the whole gnome-session for the fist time
> EPIPHANY: Time to load epiphany for the fist time
> OPENOFFICE: Time to load any openoffice application for the fist time
> 
> Original timings:
> 
> - GDM: 75 seconds (more than 1 minute!)
> - GNOME: 41 seconds
> - EPIPHANY: 5 seconds
> - OPENOFFICE: 22 seconds
> 
> Results:
> - GDM: 38 seconds (!!)
> - GNOME: 19 seconds
> - EPIPHANY: 2 seconds
> - OPENOFFICE: 5 seconds (!!)
> 
> Bottlenecks I couldn't resolve:
> 
> - IDE detection in the kernel
> - init start time
> - USB detection
> - nvidia driver probing for monitor/lcd/tv
> - gnome trying to load 1500 files (it seems to be resolved now with
> icon-cache, owen?)
> 
> FC3 seems to be slower.  I've just installed FC3 this week, and I really
> miss my old boot timings
> 
> Method:
> 
> Since I am the only one who uses this notebook, and it doesn't change
> the hardware, there are several things that doesn't need to be running,
> and several other things that doesn't need to be checked (quota for
> example)
> 
> I've also changed the order of things that are started, for example
> there is no need to load httpd nor sshd before bringing gdm up.
> 
> Gory details:
> 
> - I disabled:
>   - kudzu
>   - rhgb
>   - netfs
>   - sendmail
> 
> - I added "fastboot" option to the kernel.  I saw that rc.sysinit use
> this flag to skip some things, I don't remember what exactly did at this
> time
> 
> - I commented out every unneeded check by rc.sysinit on my machine (like
> quotas)
> 
> - I prepared an readahead.early.files running strace -e trace=open on X
> and gdm
> 
> - the fist thing that I put in rc.sysinit was an hdparm command the get
> the best of my slow disk
> 
> - readahead.early.files is processed asynchronously with low priority as
> soon as possible (on top of rc.sysinit).  It preloads X+gdm
> 
> - I commented out the line that loads prefdm in iniitab, replacing it
> with a chkconfig script
> 
> - I disabled "unix:" fonts in X, so xfs was disabled
> 
> - the fisrt script to run runlevel 5 is the prefdm chkconfig script, I
> added "ifup lo" in before loading the real prefedm script
> 
> - services like pcmcia, sshd, httpd, and others are loaded with low
> priority behinds the scenes, while x+gdm are starting.  They ever load
> fine, so I don't need to see if they load or not.
> 
> - I prepared a readahead.files running strace -e trace=open over gnome-
> session + gnome componentes (gnome-panel, gconfd and others).  There I
> found all the icons loaded by gnome-panel (by the theme I suppose)
> 
> - readahead is executed against readahead.files just after gdm is ready
> to accept a login.  I did it measuring the time and adding a sleep
> command before running readahead (cof cof)
> 
> - while the user (me) is entering the username and password, the gnome
> session is preloaded with readahead.
> 
> - I prepared another readahead file running strace -e trace=open over
> openoffice and epiphany
> 
> - I set up gnome-session-properties to run this readahead just after
> loading the gnome-session (priority 90 did the work)
> 
> This approach doesn't make the system faster at all, but it seems faster
> to the user. The main trick is to change the order of loading the system
> components and preload the slowest applications.
> 
> I don't think that this is applicable to the distribution as a whole,
> but I know that some things than can help on this type of customization
> and may be applied on Fedora
> 
> 1. rc.sysinit could be modularized, so the user can disable/enable some
> bits of it without touching the script file.  An easy way could be to
> move some part of it to chkconfig scripts
> 
> 2. prefdm in inittab could be moved to a chkconfig script, and the order
> of services could be changed so prefdm could be started before starting
> services like httpd, sshd, and others
> 
> 3. figure out a way to automate the generation of readahead files to
> match the most used files
> 
> I know that Seth Nickell was working on 1 and 2, but I haven't heard of
> that again (SystemServices)
> 
> I would be glad to help on improving Fedora boot time
> --
> Franco Catrin L.  TUXPAN
> http://www.tuxpan.com/fcatrin
> 
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