TIP: Improve bootup speed by reprofiling bootup

[robzon]

Tests on edgy:

Before tweaking: 45s
After profiling: 43s
After removing --background: 40s

Not much, but still better
Thanks!
And I'm gonna translate this to Polish if you don't mind

[Melvil]

Tests on edgy:

Before tweaking: 38s
After profiling: 35s
After removing --background: 35s-45s (somewhat inconsistent)

Strangely enough, I can't boot anymore after applying the "hack".
After 4 reboots now all kernels hang at different positions during bootup. I'm not sure it's related to the hack, though.
Adding "--background" back fixes this, however

[sup]

41 to 38 to 40 so maybe no difference at all when we take into account I hand-watched it

[K.Mandla]

Thanks for this. I think it only saves me a second or two in the end (I'm using a very sparse Xubuntu setup anyway), but it's definitely helpful. Cheers!

[brainkilla]

Definite improvement, I can't provide benchmark data, perhaps 8-10 sec less Thank you for this

[Wallakoala]

this may sound weird, but this actually increased my boot time by 10 seconds. I followed both "hacks" and then I disabled the second one, and my boot time is 57 seconds were it is usually 45-46 seconds. Now this is every time I boot, not just the first time after the profiling thing. Basically what happens when it boots up is it kinda gets "stuck" on "Reading files needed to boot" It stays on that for a long time, and then usplash does that annoying thing where it quits and it goes to the text and then eventually after a while the boot proceeds.

This pisses me off quite a bit, so if anybody has any way that I can fix this it would be greatly appreciated.

[jdong]

Open up /etc/readahead/boot with a text editor (with admin privs) and delete all the contents.

[Wallakoala]

Open up /etc/readahead/boot with a text editor (with admin privs) and delete all the contents.

aah...it's all nice and back to normal. Thanks!

But do you think there was anything that I did wrong that would cause that to happen?

[jdong]

Nah, I don't think you did anything wrong... There's just something about your hardware/software configuration that means you don't benefit from readahead... and that certainly does happen.

[Eddie Hung]

Hmm.. on my nearly-latest edgy setup, the bonus hack is already implemented? (i.e. --background is already not present) - I imagine this is the same for everyone else on edgy (I'm sure I haven't already tried this hack!)

Also, seeing as edgy uses upstart rather than the old sysvinit system as per dapper, will this hack still have an effect?

Eddie