very common kernel modules slow down the boot process

Dave Jones davej at redhat.com
Wed Apr 2 04:20:49 UTC 2008


On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 01:22:13AM +0200, Harald Hoyer wrote:
 > Compiling these modules, which are loaded on nearly every PC, in the kernel cuts down my boot time from 42s to 
 > 32s on my computer:
 > 
 > ata_generic

this should only be used as a last resort if no other storage modules
claim a device. Usually there's a chipset driver that's a better choice
instead, but we keep this around so that we continue to boot on hardware
thats released after the distro.

We could fudge around it by changing the initcall order to be later
than all the chipset drivers (if that hasn't been done already)

 > ata_piix
 > cdrom
 > dm_mirror
 > dm_mod
 > dm_snapshot
 > dm_zero
 > ehci_hcd
 > ext3
 > floppy
 > i2c_core
 > jbd
 > libata
 > mbcache
 > ohci_hcd
 > parport
 > parport_pc
 > pata_acpi
 > scsi_mod
 > sd_mod
 > sg
 > snd
 > snd_mixer_oss
 > snd_page_alloc
 > snd_pcm
 > snd_pcm_oss
 > snd_seq
 > snd_seq_device
 > snd_seq_dummy
 > snd_seq_midi_event
 > snd_seq_oss
 > snd_timer
 > soundcore
 > sr_mod
 > uhci_hcd
 
Someone already proposed we switch the usb hcd drivers to builtins
for F10.  It's a bit late right now to be changing something like
that which could introduce regressions.   In the past when we tried
this, there were initialisation ordering problems.
(again, maybe it's fixed now, but it's something to find out in f10,
 and then perhaps an f9 backport)

The rest of the modules you list deserve some consideration too.
After the usb suggestion last week, I made a todo item for f10
to go through all our =m choices that could possibly be =y's,
and also the opposite.  We have a ton of stuff built-in that
could probably be better off as modules.
(boot with initcall_debug, and you'll see we spend quite a few
seconds of bootup trying to initialise hardware that doesn't exist).

	Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk




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