speed up boot time?

i join awhile ago but i never got around to posting...

the boot time on my slackware is a bloody time waster...

most of the time i am waiting for it to boot...

ive seen someone speed it up....problem is that i dont know how...

any help?

which parts of the boot process are taking long?? ldconfig?? font-cache??

no clue mang...


from the time that i select linux to boot in lilo to the time that i login....it is really slow...and i have seen someone speed it up...

can you tell how many seconds approx. from choosing linux
to the inlog prompt ?
and on what type of pc. ( cpu freq.) ?

egag

When booting up you should see many messages, but on some your computer should wait some time. Look at it and post, which processes are so time-consuming.

I am guessing his problem is most likely hotplug, like me, since that seems to take the longest, and for me, hotplug takes about 20-30 or so secs, to complete, everything else isn't that slow, and I have tried disabling hotplug, but then I lose sound, and functionality of my mouse and so I don't quite know how to disable hotplug and keeping all the hardware working. I know the purpose of hotplug is to detect any new hardware change, so if adding and removing hardware is not an issue, than hotplug can be disabled, the question is, how to disable hotplug while keeping the hardware you already have working..

Here are two things I've picked up on this forum that will decrease your boot time:

(1) [from Tinkster] Set ldconfig to run 5 minutes after boot rather than during boot:

Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local, append line

/usr/bin/echo "ldconfig" | /usr/bin/at now +5minutes

(2) [from Shade] Add the command "compact" to the global options section of your /etc/lilo.conf. List it on a line by itself (I put it just below "prompt"). Note that there is apparently sometimes a conflict with LBA on some systems.

There are other tweaks, I'm sure.

Originally posted by Jeebizz I am guessing his problem is most likely hotplug, like me, since that seems to take the longest, and for me, hotplug takes about 20-30 or so secs, to complete, everything else isn't that slow, and I have tried disabling hotplug, but then I lose sound, and functionality of my mouse and so I don't quite know how to disable hotplug and keeping all the hardware working. I know the purpose of hotplug is to detect any new hardware change, so if adding and removing hardware is not an issue, than hotplug can be disabled, the question is, how to disable hotplug while keeping the hardware you already have working..

for the soundcard you'd just need to run "alsaconf" and it would auto-detect the card and configure your system accordingly... for the mouse, well, what exactly is the functionality you loose??

I can't get into KDE, cause the XServer complains that there is no mouse at all

Jeebizz, what mouse are you using (brand/model)?? interface (PS/2, USB, etc.)?? what does the xorg.conf file's mouse section look like when you boot with hotplug and what does it look like when you boot without it??

EDIT: if it's USB i would check if the USB modules are what needs loading... perhaps hotplug is loading the USB modules for you, so when you don't run hotplug your USB modules aren't loaded and your mouse doesn't work?? it's just a thought...

# **********************************************************************
# Core Pointer's InputDevice section
# **********************************************************************

Section "InputDevice"

# Identifier and driver

    Identifier  "Mouse1"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option "Protocol"    "ExplorerPS/2"
    Option "Device"      "/dev/mouse"
    Option "ZAxisMapping" "6 7"
    Option "Buttons" "7"

I am afraid that I no longer have that kind of information when I disabled hotplug , sorry , and my mouse is a microsoft explorer intellimouse USB, obviously using the PS/2 protocol

Originally posted by Jeebizz I am afraid that I no longer have that kind of information when I disabled hotplug , sorry

i'm not sure what you mean... if this part of the xorg.conf is different when you boot without hotplug then all you gotta do is edit it to make it look like it does when hotplug is run...

did ya check the usb drivers??

lsmod | grep usb

I am really sorry for not being as clear as I can , ok.. after disabling hotplug, i would still have that information about my mouse in xorg.conf , X would just complain that there is no mouse, and I'm afraid I no longer have the exact error output...

usb-storage            66176   0 (unused)
usbmouse                2040   0 (unused)
input                   3200   0 [keybdev mousedev hid usbmouse]
usbcore                59308   1 [usb-storage hid usbmouse printer uhci ehci-hcd]

BTW, this is all with hotplug still enabled, I haven't gone back and retried disabling it, but I will very soon now, only because I saw this thread, last time I played with hotplug was about a month or so back, or it may have been longer, thats why I don't even have the exact error outputs..

cool... let's see if the problem is those modules are missing when you disable hotplug...

ok to clarify one more thing, the way I disabled hotplug before was through lilo.conf , I think it was something like

append=nohotplug

but not sure, or should I just chmod -x /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug ?