Ubuntu boot optimization strategy and oddity question

lupusarcanus · 01-07-2010, 09:57 PM

Well, I want to get Ubuntu blazing fast and I started out by changing the swappiness to just 10 and got a huge performance spike. I was very happy with that.

Then I used rcconf and GNOME's startup applications GUI and edited out quite a bit but still have a somewhat slow boot.

Well, the next thing I thought I should do is edit the inittab and rid my self of some surely unneeded services. Well, according to this website, Ubuntu doesn't use this inittab, but etc/event.d doesn't exist either!

Well I looked in /etc for something related to init, and I believe I have found where these services are called upon. /etc/init.d and /etc/init.

Now the files contain many scripts for different services so I was wondering how to edit these to turn them off to optimize my boot!
Do I comment out the unneeded ones?

My next question is what strategy should I use as I edit these?

I think I can get rid of "ssh" and "cups" and "samba" since I don't use these. Can someone point me to a nice list of services and their functions?

I just want to optimize Ubuntu as much as possible to not only have a fast computer for my self and family to use, but to impress Windows users with the speed that can be obtained from Linux!

craigevil · 01-07-2010, 10:03 PM

Ubuntu Tweak - Let's rock with Ubuntu - http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2008...plication.html

Quick & Painless Ubuntu Speed Tweaks | SysAdmin's Journey: My collection of notes, thoughts, and howtos - http://sysadminsjourney.com/2008/08/...u-speed-tweaks

BootProcessSpeedup - Debian Wiki - http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup

lupusarcanus · 01-07-2010, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by craigevil

Ubuntu Tweak - Let's rock with Ubuntu - http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2008...plication.html

Quick & Painless Ubuntu Speed Tweaks | SysAdmin's Journey: My collection of notes, thoughts, and howtos - http://sysadminsjourney.com/2008/08/...u-speed-tweaks

BootProcessSpeedup - Debian Wiki - http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup

Wow. Great response. Thanks for those links. I will have try those. Very impressive and makes me want to ask if your personally use those.

In fact, I'll keep this thread updated with any speed improvements I encounter. My current boot time is 43 seconds, and I feel the responsiveness of my system 1-10 is about a 6.

lupusarcanus · 01-07-2010, 10:49 PM

Well, I just added concurrency=shell to /etc/init.d/rc and didn't notice any significant improvement.

Next I am going to add noatime and nodiratime as options to my filesystems, but am unsure of how to do this. (I don't need, and have never even used searching for a file by time edited, made or update.)

Here is my fstab:

Code:

proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=53968190-4a60-4786-b36e-06d8d22f2475 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=8c877574-db8c-48e6-bbd2-e449c66ef14f none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

Where do I add those options?

craigevil · 01-07-2010, 11:54 PM

Code:

# automatically added, WDC_WD1600JS-75N-WD-WCANMF031969-part2, /dev/sda2
UUID=5603c42b-2d73-4b60-a954-ad232cf5c0de	/	ext3	defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro	0	1


# automatically added, WDC_WD1600JS-75N-WD-WCANMF031969-part4, /dev/sda4, LABEL=Swap
UUID=2ec72325-3781-4f50-afd3-d244e7d4c5fe	none	swap	sw	0	0	

# automatically added, PHILIPS_DVD+-RW_DVD8801_VA155S61665391
/dev/cdrom	/media/cdrom	udf,iso9660	user,noauto	0	0

# automatically added, SONY_DVD-ROM_DDU1615
/dev/cdrom1	/media/cdrom1	udf,iso9660	user,noauto	0	0

I use insserv, readahead, preload, prelink. My system boots in under 30 seconds, most apps open instantly.
concurrency=startpar is what I use.

But I do not run Ubuntu, the biggest slow down is all the services *buntu starts at boot. Once lxde boots I have around 80 processes running,

Processes 111 Uptime 1 day Memory 160.7/492.8MB thats with lxterminal+irssi+shell-fm, pcmanfm, evince, firefox running.