Boot Process Visualization

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.

Comments

Re:Reboot visualization

[which way is up]

I love it so much better when they go down sloooowwww. Oh yeah baby take your time...

Oh, wait, are we talking about the same thing here?

heh

[minus_273]

in case it is slashdotted here is a mirror of the chart.

Linux ===============
BSD ========

Re:Mirror?

[gniv]

There are some charts linked from a post here.

it's easy to speed up boot

[nocomment]

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

Re:it's easy to speed up boot

[macdaddy]

I can think of a number of examples where this would fail but on the average desktop I don't think this would be much of a problem. Servers on the otherhand have to have certain processes started for others to start correctly. MIMEDefang and Sendmail for example. Sendmail and OpenLDAP. PgSQL and OpenLDAP. All the various NFS goodies and any server processes that require something off one of the NFS-mounted volumes. Still I can think of dozens that can and should be started in parallel. I can't think of any ill-effects of starting a number of processes that come to mind in simultaneously. I'll have to give that a try sometime. Maybe the init process should have a Next Generation version that allows you to specify what is absolutely required by a process to start correctly. init-ng can then decide what it can start in parallel based on that. Sounds like a project to me. :-)

Re:IIS?

[Ingolfke]

He was, but his Linux box just took so long to boot it wasn't worth the effort.

Re:For starters..

[kmmatthews]

On the other hand, Unix wasn't really intended to be booted every day, e.g. the way XP is*. (MS intentionally made sure the boot up was very fast, running things side by side and some other tricks.)

(* IMHO.. If I'm wrong.. I'm sure you'll let me know..)

Re:Mirror?

[zigam]

Here's the mirror:
bootchart.sourceforge.net

Re:IIS?

[gniv]

Here are some pictures that are not slashdotted yet: one, two, three.

They are taken from here.

Re:Bah.

[stratjakt]

# First of all, if you run Linux, you're not booting much. What...rebooting maybe once a month?

Some of us shut our computers off. Not every linux PC is a 24/7 server. People own laptops, shut down desktops when not in use, etc. Plus theres linux' ever-growing embedded segment. Your TiVo never gets shut off? How important is boot-time to a device like TiVo or Zaurus?

# Boot time doesn't have to be an arduous wait. Yes, on out-of-the-box distros it can be incredible, but I blame the distro, not Linux.

Yes, distros are poorly configured, and the userbase is largely stupid. Noone talks about runlevels anymore. Put "basic stuff you need to get the user going" on a lower runlevel, and "more advanced gitchy bullshit like AIM etc" on a higher runlevel. Most linux distros behave by default the way a spyware infected win98 box does, making the user wait while it starts umpteen zillion fringe services.

# If you choose to not fiddle, then you choose to have boot times that are increasing. It takes time to autoprobe everything correctly and get it set up if you're too lazy to do it yourself. Windows does it from the perspective of 'throw everything in there and take up gadzillions of RAM'. Linux says, 'I'll autosetup everything but still keep you lean'. You pay for what you get, folks.

Pure "M$ sucks rolF!" bullshit from the clueless. Windows runs a microkernel, Linux runs a monolithic kernel. They work differently. Windows loads the drivers it knows it needs (the installed ones) at boot time, linux pages the crap in and out of the kernel itself.

This is the quickest part of the boot, really. Delays come when you have dhcpcd timing out while looking for a DHCP server that doesn't exist but yet for some reason runs by default even if you have a statically configured address. Or your waiting for privoxy to load and parse its blacklists, or for squid to primp and preen its caches, etc..

# People who run IIS and then subject it to a /.ing should be drug into the street and shot for being an idiot. T

Most sites that stand up to a /.ing are running IIS from, what I've seen. Ever see Slate or MSN go down when /. links to them?

It has more to do with being able to afford bandwidth than some magical uberneat0 perl script you found on efnet.