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-   -   How long should Slackware take to boot? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/how-long-should-slackware-take-to-boot-4175445777/)

nepeta 01-15-2013 09:46 PM

How long should Slackware take to boot?
 
Hi, I'm installing Slackware for the first time and I read in the guide that I should make an initrd and use the generic kernel. I did, and I thought that would make booting faster but it's actually slower by a couple of seconds. It takes about 40 secs booting from either kernel. Is this normal? Did I do something wrong? I'm so scared I'm going to mess something up because I'm not used to having to do so much stuff.

salparadise 01-16-2013 01:06 AM

That's about normal.
You can edit /etc/lilo.conf and add the word "compact" at the top of the file (after the comments section). That will speed up the boot process somewhat.

dugan 01-16-2013 01:33 AM

And: Improving Slackware Boot Time, by Woodsman.

And yeah, that boot time is normal on a normal hard drive. On an SSD it's much faster.

bosth 01-16-2013 01:56 AM

Compared to some other distros, Slackware does boot a bit slow. I'd echo dugan by saying that yours is about normal.

wigry 01-16-2013 02:40 AM

First split that boot time into two parts - Kernel and the rest from Init. There is nothing much you can do to reduce the boot time of the kernel (except lilo compact line) and the rest since initrd is mainly slowed down by massive index rebuilding which can be disabled if you wish so. I however would not care about boot time at least on the desktop as it is once-a-day event. I have that 40 seconds to wait till I get the prompt.

brianL 01-16-2013 07:57 AM

I'm not worried about it, but 14.0 does seem to take a bit longer to boot (from lilo boot-screen to KDE desktop) than 13.37 did.

vdemuth 01-16-2013 12:01 PM

I've often wondered the same thing and wonder if anyone with the technical skill would take those parts of rc.M and that cause the delays and create some sort of run-once type script for them for first time boot after initial installation and then only run again when those parts referenced are updated/altered.
If I knew how to go about it I would probably have a go myself. Unfortunately my knowledge in that area is sitting at 0%.

wigry 01-16-2013 12:57 PM

Actually it would be fairly simple script that would store the cache updating result somewhere in a system and if the results are either missing (first boot) or out of date, the cache's would be rebuilt. Only question is to find out how to determine if the cached data is out of date or not. Anyhow with such a setup the script could run on every boot and would not consume more than couple of milliseconds to figure out whether to start update process or not.

Woodsman 01-16-2013 03:06 PM

Quote:

I've often wondered the same thing and wonder if anyone with the technical skill would take those parts of rc.M and that cause the delays and create some sort of run-once type script for them for first time boot after initial installation and then only run again when those parts referenced are updated/altered.
If I knew how to go about it I would probably have a go myself. Unfortunately my knowledge in that area is sitting at 0%.
Refer to comment #3. :)

perbh 01-16-2013 08:27 PM

Quite honestly - who the h... cares how long it takes to boot and how impressive the boot-screens are?? (well, quite some few obviously see this as a problem).
So folks - how often do you boot? One of the huge advantages of linux is that it just goes and goes and goes and ... ya get the jist?? I had a server (runni ng slackware, what else?) that I didn't boot for 3 years - there were some unattended boots because of power-glitches (no ups!), but never more than a couple of times a year. I can't remember the last time I booted my primary desktop - probably in November sometime ...
So - if it takes 20 secs or 4 mins - I don't really care. It is not like that 'other OS' where rebooting is the order of the day.

Just my 2c-worth ...

vdemuth 01-17-2013 01:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodsman (Post 4871675)
Refer to comment #3. :)

Yeah, I get that, but that's running from a cron job, rather than when booting and whilst a valid and alternative way of completing said task is not what I had in mind.
Thanks for the suggestion though.

Quote:

Quite honestly - who the h... cares how long it takes to boot and how impressive the boot-screens are?? (well, quite some few obviously see this as a problem).
So folks - how often do you boot? One of the huge advantages of linux is that it just goes and goes and goes and ... ya get the jist?? I had a server (runni ng slackware, what else?) that I didn't boot for 3 years - there were some unattended boots because of power-glitches (no ups!), but never more than a couple of times a year. I can't remember the last time I booted my primary desktop - probably in November sometime ...
So - if it takes 20 secs or 4 mins - I don't really care. It is not like that 'other OS' where rebooting is the order of the day.

Just my 2c-worth ...
I to have a server running, so can't disagree there, but not so good for laptop users though, which I also have and just gets booted as needed.

salparadise 01-17-2013 01:42 AM

Some of us don't have very much money and wives who say "what do you mean you left it on all night? Was it doing anything? No? Then switch it off when you finish."

Better a daily boot than a few days with no electricity.

Besides, since I put SSD drives in my machines, they boot real fast.

TobiSGD 01-17-2013 05:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by perbh (Post 4871823)
So folks - how often do you boot?

Workstation:
Code:

tobi ~ ☺ $ uptime
 12:33:23 up 3 days, 16:17,  7 users,  load average: 0.97, 0.66, 0.73

Would be longer, but I have upgraded to -current on this machine 3 days ago.

Laptop:
Quote:

tobi@dragon ~ ☺ $ uptime
12:34:43 up 6 days, 7:47, 6 users, load average: 0.26, 0.12, 0.13
Hibernation does not reset the uptime counter.

Fileserver:
Quote:

tobi@server ~ ☺ $ uptime
12:36:17 up 3 days, 9:12, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.02, 0.00
Usually about a month or two, but I had shut the machine down to remove dust from that machine.

I don't care about boot-time, but I am using SSDs in my machines, so I have faster boots than normal users anyway.
Quote:

It is not like that 'other OS' where rebooting is the order of the day.
I have absolutely no problem with that, my Windows install can run for days without a reboot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vdemuth
not so good for laptop users though, which I also have and just gets booted as needed.

Use hibernation, boots faster and after power-on you are exactly where you shut down the machine.

Woodsman 01-17-2013 11:22 AM

Quote:

Yeah, I get that, but that's running from a cron job, rather than when booting and whilst a valid and alternative way of completing said task is not what I had in mind.
Rename the script to rc.housekeeping, move to /etc/rc.d, and run from within your rc.local as a background task.

Quote:

Quite honestly - who the h... cares how long it takes to boot and how impressive the boot-screens are??
Because many people shut down their systems at the end of the day. Electricity costs money. :)

dugan 01-17-2013 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by perbh (Post 4871823)
So folks - how often do you boot?

My computers are turned on, on a need basis. When my computing session finishes, I power down.

Here, btw, is Pat's statement on why it takes so long:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post4328130

TobiSGD 01-17-2013 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodsman (Post 4872314)
Because many people shut down their systems at the end of the day. Electricity costs money. :)

That is a valid argument, but do you really care if the system takes 30 seconds or a minute to boot if you only do it once a day?

gnashley 01-17-2013 12:31 PM

How about those who reboot several times a day -like me? Is the goal of saving time during bootup simply invalid under Slackware because the original setup takes no thought of it? My system, which is pretty similar to Slackware, boots to CLI login in about 6 seconds -10 seconds to GUI login. Slackware itself is pretty much bound to take 2-3 times as long (on this machine) because of the extra things it does. Most of it is done for sanity's sake, but most other systems do not find all of these things necessary. I'm particularly irked by the icon-cache routines since I mostly don't use gtk2 at all.

I achieve those times partly by eliminating the things which really are not necessary during bootup. Anything somebody wants to add back can be done in rc.local. Most of the time improvements actually came from other optimizations instead of simply by-passing possibly-useful actions. Anyone who really wants/needs faster boot times on Slackware could do the same. But it means altering several standard things so persistence of changes becomes a problem when updating packages. For myself, all the hacks are built right into the original packages. For instance, I use a faster shell to run the init scripts -but not simply a link from /bin/sh to ash/dash -since that would compromise the use of the many shell scripts which are actually using/needing the special behaviour of /bin/bash as /bin/sh. I've re-written all the init scripts to use the alternate shell directly (calling it /bin/initsh). Other optimizations include using hard-coded paths to all executables -resolving PATHs and links both take up time. Of course, some things are backgrounded to promote faster times. Also, careful use of sourcing as opposed to direct execution saves a few extra instances of the shell and avoids the latency of starting each instance. One thing I have not implemented (yet, anyway), would be the use of a single conf file which would control the desired startup status of optional routines by using variables: instead of checking if each rc.d script is executable in order to decide if it is wanted, the answer would be in a conf file. I believe that Archlinux does something like this...

That said, my system avoids all the 'serious' hacks such as readahead, preload, patches to X, etc, while still achieving a pretty decent speedup of ~60%, while maintaining a sane startup which does not rely on using cron to make up the difference.

TobiSGD 01-17-2013 12:39 PM

Of course your concerns about bootspeed are valid for you. The real question would be: Is it worth to do all that work for having a system starting in 10 seconds to GUI instead of 20-30, instead of just using the already available standby function and have an instant on system? If the bootspeed matters so much that you do all this, standby would be by a far more logical conclusion.

But honestly, is bootspeed really that important to you?

fadein 01-17-2013 02:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by salparadise (Post 4871088)
That's about normal.
You can edit /etc/lilo.conf and add the word "compact" at the top of the file (after the comments section). That will speed up the boot process somewhat.

Wow, I wish I knew about "compact" a long time ago! This is great!

Fred-1.2.13 01-17-2013 02:02 PM

Nothing really to contribute except my workstation up time:

bash-4.2$ uptime
14:01:05 up 73 days, 1:21, 3 users, load average: 0.11, 0.09, 0.12

I don't reboot unless I need to... people use their machines differently what works for me may not work for you.

slacktroll 01-18-2013 05:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wigry (Post 4871135)
First split that boot time into two parts - Kernel and the rest from Init. There is nothing much you can do to reduce the boot time of the kernel (except lilo compact line) and the rest since initrd is mainly slowed down by massive index rebuilding which can be disabled if you wish so. I however would not care about boot time at least on the desktop as it is once-a-day event. I have that 40 seconds to wait till I get the prompt.

Don't blame things you have no understandings for. Blaming a kernel for taking 40 seconds to start is really using a hammer. The kernel can bootup in seconds. What's slow is utter crap userspace that taking long.

It might be udev that went for a ride with a bicycle, a useless initrd. or a something in the kernel which tries to load, which is none existance in OP's hardware. 40 Seconds for a bootup in Slackware is a very very long bootup and it only does take so long for me from the installation cd when actual installing the dist.

There's really no right or wrong way to do things, neither do i say so. But if OP want's a initrd, a generic kernel and everything as a module. Then it's his own choice - He might find it useful with everything compiled as modules, even though he don't have 99% of what's turned on in the kernel at all - nor do he use it either. I can't know, i just speculate.

Atleast, Slackware actual starts rather than doing things in the background, which makes it feel faster.

For the question to OP. Please try to figure out which 'tools' are slow, and please report more. Atleast try to compile your own kernel, and turn of stuff you have no use for. And please come back when saying so.

It's all about configuration - not dists themself. If it takes 40 seconds to boot a kernel, something went very wrong. I understand the installation CD takes so long to boot and why it does.

Woodsman 01-18-2013 12:09 PM

Quote:

That is a valid argument, but do you really care if the system takes 30 seconds or a minute to boot if you only do it once a day?
I'm not the OP who raised the question. :) Regardless, for myself, once a day? No, but gnashley raised a point I did not mention: multiple reboots during the day. I experiment a lot using multiple partitions and virtual images. Reboot times become important with such usage.

Everybody is a little different. Such discussions are important for people for whom boot speeds are important. For everybody else the discussion is irrelevant and questioning the usage habits of people is not going to help the discussion. :)

Quote:

My system, which is pretty similar to Slackware, boots to CLI login in about 6 seconds -10 seconds to GUI login.
Gnashley, do you have copies of your scripts or explanations posted somewhere?

gnashley 01-19-2013 03:01 AM

Woodsman, here's an older package of my init scripts:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/amigolinux....7-i586-1.tpkg
Note that the package is actually a tarred, xz'ed archive just like slackware packages. *DO NOT* try to install or use the package on your Slackware box as it will leave it unbootable! As I mentioned, the scripts are used in conjunction with the 'dash' shell -renamed to 'initsh'. IOW, I use a shell dedictaed to the init process. The scripts would mostly work with ash as well. They will also work with bash. At first, I made the whole thing so that you could choose to use either bash or dash by making /bin/initsh a link to whichever you liked. Since I roll my own here, I am able to control the content of all init subscripts. Wherever possible, they have been converted to use /bin/initsh as well, although a few still use /bin/sh because of bashisms. Lots of little tricks in there -some of which I adapted from earlier work by GrapefruitGirl and tuxdev -they were working on strict POSIX scripts for init. Accessory scripts come with their individual packages. A bit of wrangling/checking might make the whole thing work on a Slackware box.

nepeta 01-20-2013 07:05 AM

Oh boy did this start a conversation. Thanks, it's good to know that it's normal. I was afraid that I might have messed something up. It is installed on a netbook, but the battery doesn't work so it pretty much stays in the same place. I'd leave it on but I'm pretty much always messing with it and playing with different OS's and stuff.


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