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Boot Process Visualization

Posted by timothy on from the what-in-what-order dept.

zigam writes "The time needed to boot desktop Linux systems is becoming an issue. That's why I recently took the challenge posted by Red Hat's Owen Taylor on the Fedora developers list and came up with a tool for visualization of the boot process. It collects performance data during the boot up and then renders an SVG or PNG performance chart. It immediately helped Red Hat developers solve some issues and I have since received boot charts from other GNU/Linux developers as well. Solaris kernel developers reported success in improving their boot process too." Update: 12/15 20:04 GMT by T : Sorry, someone decided your time was worth wasting; no more mirrored bootchart.

5 of 536 comments (clear)

  1. it's easy to speed up boot by nocomment · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I added a '&' to my /etc/rc file.
    like so:
    $i start&

    I have been berated a coupdl times in online forum because 'some services might need it to start properly', but I have never noticed any ill effects. My machines now boots in about 6 seconds :-D

    --
    /* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
    /* http://allyourbasearebelongto.us */
  2. Tried with the IBM enhancements? by earthforce_1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-boot.html?ca=dgr-lnxw82-obg-BootFast

    IBM has published a paper on speeding up the boot process using something like a make to launch things in parallel that are not dependent on each other.

    --
    My rights don't need management.
    1. Re:Tried with the IBM enhancements? by dabraun · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Something like Windows XP has been doing for years?

      XP not only boots processes in parallel - it monitors which sectors of the disk are read during bootup, moves them around so they all sit in order in the same place on the disk as a background process, and prefetches the whole damn thing during subsequent bootups.

      It also does the same thing for application launches - you start an app, it profiles what is read from disk, reorders it, and prefetches it when you run the app again later.

  3. server vs workstation by studboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe this is a silly question, but why cant the boot process be optimized for "workstation" type usage? That is: get a usable X login prompt up as soon as possible.

    On my machine, a bunch of random (but useful) things are fired up sequentially, before the prompt appears. Some things are used rarely/not at all, but they're still started. I dont want to disable them, but I dont want to wait for them either. Apache. MySQL. Privoxy.

    Why doesnt inetd start all these things? Apache would get started on first use. Likewise with the other services -- I pay for the startup (once) when I want to use them.

    On a server, it'll be up for forever so starting everything on boot makes sense. For a workstation, the system should be usable as fast as possible; the rest of the services can just as well wait until later.

  4. IBM articles about improving Linux boot time by OmegaBlac · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here some articles regarding booting Linux faster: Boot Linux faster and Reboot Linux faster using kexec Enjoy! ;)