Slow boot

[jjaythomas]

Even on a fresh instal LMDE seem to run great but take 20 - 25% longer to boot.
Wonder if its my partitioning scheme?

Usually as follows...
8-12 gig root (/)
1 - 1 1/2 times installed memory for swap
rest of HD (minus 8gig or so) for home (/home)
8gig or so for a partition called bridge or the keep (for easy transfers of files with MSWin)

all primary partitions and are formatted as ext4 (except bridge(NTFS or fat32) and swap
usually get partitions ready using gparted (parted magic distro/disk) before install. Like clonezilla disk sort of

P.S. LMDE seems not to like Formatting NTFS (in installer not external gparted program) hangs

Thank You
J.Jay

[äxl]

/var/log/kern.log will give you a timetable of what happens during the first 30 seconds of boot up.
Maybe there you can see time lags. I have this for example:

Code: Select all

Apr 10 07:52:43 pc kernel: [    8.824018] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
Apr 10 07:52:43 pc kernel: [   13.360026] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)


It takes almost 4.5 seconds to realize that there is no link on ata1 but that should be a hardware problem ...
Differences smaller than two seconds shouldn't worry you.

[jjaythomas]

Thanks will try that...

trying fresh install on prepared partition. and see if trim boot services may help. Was told awhile back about a boot benchmarker(?) to see where might be hold up. Will search and find relevant post.

J.Jay

[DrHu]

Small drives can boot faster, so if your partitioning scheme includes a smaller size for the OS install, it can help speed the load of the OS on boot.

--of course that means you really have to keep in mind how you intend to use the OS and applications as well as your own data..

[viking777]

J.Jay. FWIW IMO debian is just a slow booting distro, you have to live with it or leave it. On my computer typical times are 40 seconds to get to a login screen and 20 seconds after login to get to a desktop. I just did a fresh install of Debian Testing and instead of 75 seconds to a desktop with LMDE, it takes 60 seconds. Typically Ubuntu would take half that time, but I don't want to use Ubuntu and I do want to use Debian.

[jjaythomas]

Thank you everyone

I read to make a small partition for boot (/boot) of around 128mb as first partition, and make it ext2. Has anyone tried that? I did once along time ago, but couldn't see any boot speed improvement.
I think it was before ext4 existence and ext3 was standard when I tried that (Ubuntu Drake/eft or so. .

P.S. Boot speed not to important on desktop (especially if hibernate/sleep mode at nite ect. But on a laptop/tablet/netbook it's more of a priority.

J.Jay

[äxl]

Was told awhile back about a boot benchmarker(?) to see where might be hold up.

You probably mean bootchart.

I just did a fresh install of Debian Testing and instead of 75 seconds to a desktop with LMDE, it takes 60 seconds. Typically Ubuntu would take half that time, but I don't want to use Ubuntu and I do want to use Debian.

What?!? Why is Ubuntu so fast?

Can you get Ubuntu with MATE?!

[jjaythomas]

Yea bootchart

that sound familiar. Tried fresh install of new (UP4) ISO rc, about same boot speed. I like the idea of rolling (semi with LMDE ) for my hobby (like to recycle old computers for people/charity).
Will probably stay with Xubuntu (Lubuntu for real old/limited stuff) for ease of use. It still upgrades pretty reliably between versions thru net connection (as usually as fast as a a LMDE pack)

PCLOS seems harderd (exspecially packages/RPMs) Arch out of question, others have good and bad features for end users (computer use/experience vary by target user). LMint work good (Buntu ones) peppermint is very good for netbooks,WattOS for general Laptops ect. I'd like to settle on one distro (2 or 3 flavors) to make things easy (for me).

Suse Tumbleweed??

Decisions Decisions
J.Jay

[viking777]

What?!? Why is Ubuntu so fast?

I don't know for sure, it just is. I don't run Ubuntu on my main machine, but I have it on an old test laptop (lower spec than the one I am using here) and typically it boots in about half the time that LMDE takes. Maybe it is because I haven't loaded it down with a lot of programs that I can't live without, but even my completely fresh install of Debian Testing was still considerably slower. Maybe it is their init system (parallel loading of scripts or something - I don't remember the details), or maybe Unity is just a lighter desktop? For me it is not enough reason to use it yet, but it is enough reason to keep an eye on it.

Can you get Ubuntu with MATE?!

I certainly hope not, but you can mangle anything if you try hard enough

[äxl]

Will probably stay with Xubuntu (Lubuntu for real old/limited stuff) for ease of use. It still upgrades pretty reliably between versions thru net connection (as usually as fast as a a LMDE pack)

One reason why I have lost the idea of a rolling release.

Maybe it is their init system (parallel loading of scripts or something - I don't remember the details)

Upstart. I informed about this before switching to another distribution and I thought others might take it over or that it wasn't such a big deal.
(I believe there already exist some ports.)
It wasn't important before I got away from Ubuntu so it shouldn't matter now.

or maybe Unity is just a lighter desktop?

Are you serious?

For me it is not enough reason to use it yet, but it is enough reason to keep an eye on it.

Can you get Ubuntu with MATE?!

I certainly hope not, but you can mangle anything if you try hard enough

Personally I don't like Unity or Gnome3 so I'm staying with MATE in any case.

[jjaythomas]

Yea

On fresh install ubuntu (I like Xubuntu) takes about 1/2 the time to boot, compared to LMDE. Once I tweak, change Auto starting stuff and the like... it goes to about to only 25% or so (tweaks ect.make a lot huger difference on LMDE than Ubuntu ones ).

P.S. Edit...

Maybe it is their init system (parallel loading of scripts or something - I don't remember the details)

Ibelieve they (Shuttleworth realy pushed)to reduce the boot time (some say at expence of stability )they achieved a good reduction using parallel loading and some stuff still loads after DE comes up (that why certian things can be used quicker later than direct after boot!).

J.Jay

[neon_overload]

J.Jay. FWIW IMO debian is just a slow booting distro, you have to live with it or leave it. On my computer typical times are 40 seconds to get to a login screen and 20 seconds after login to get to a desktop. I just did a fresh install of Debian Testing and instead of 75 seconds to a desktop with LMDE, it takes 60 seconds. Typically Ubuntu would take half that time, but I don't want to use Ubuntu and I do want to use Debian.

Just to add another perspective, in my experience this is not the case.

On my system Debian stable boots in 10 seconds, from loading grub to Gnome desktop. Windows 7 does the same in 9 seconds, and Ubuntu in 12 seconds. The difference is so small, it may just be a slight amount more of hardware-autodetection on Ubuntu's part or something. It has a very different boot system which may favour some setups at the expense of others, possibly.

I run from an (old) Intel X25-M SSD and the system is Intel H67 based.

The big change between Debian Lenny (or pre-Squeeze) and Squeeze was moving from bash to dash, and dependency-based boot, which together reduced my boot time by around 40% if I recall correctly. Prior to that Ubuntu was a little faster than Debian. Don't know how that compares to Ubuntu's boot system. Mint Debian appears to be similar to Debian stable in speed, but since I haven't set up everything the same way yet I can't do a fair comparison (and I haven't measured it properly).

[viking777]

That is very impressive neon_overload, but the vast majority of people do not have solid state drives, nor will have for quite a while given their cost per Gb. So comparing boot times between ssd's and ordinary drives is not really realistic. I appreciate you are comparing Ubuntu and Debian here and both booting from the ssd, but I think the overall performance of the ssd is masking the differences that myself and other users are seeing, other wise this thread wouldn't exist, nobody would complain about the difference between a 9, 10 or 12 second boot, but the difference between 90 seconds (LMDE), 75 seconds (Debian) and 30 seconds (Ubuntu) is definitely worthy of comment, and btw my new debian install (which is less than a week old now) has already increased its boot time to be approaching that of LMDE. It is now taking about 84 seconds to reach a desktop (47 seconds from grub to a login window and 37 seconds from a login window to a loaded desktop). I have no doubt that this is due to my having added various programs (including some startup ones) that weren't there last time I measured. Ubuntu, on my old far less powerful laptop, still loads in around 30 seconds (but it isn't carrying anywhere near the baggage that LMDE and Debian are, it is pretty well as it came off the install disk).

[äxl]

http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
EDIT:

NO, I must recommend DO NOT follow that advice.

[mint123]

http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup

Thanks for that link. I'm going to try Dash and the startup reconfigure it mentions. I remember when Ubuntu Maverick came out, the big deal was that it boots in 8 seconds on an ssd. They've put a ton of effort into boot time.

On a 3 year old laptop, I went from Vista to Mint Debian and boot time went from about 60 seconds to just under 30. That's from computer off to the desktop ready to use. This is a core 2 duo 2.4 ghz Intel cpu, 7800rpm hard drive with older but mid/lower range ATI/flgrx graphics. Gnome 2, autologin for gdm, Compiz, root and home are 2 separate partitions. Not having to defrag it to change the boot time by 10 seconds like with Vista (it varied from about 45 seconds on good days to over 60 second 2 weeks later) was great.

I guess I got very lucky with hardware the drivers like a lot.

[neon_overload]

http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup

NO, I must recommend DO NOT follow that advice.

That link is (very) old. It's from before Squeeze. When Lenny was the current stable (2009-2011) you could optionally upgrade to dash as system shell and use insserv to have a dependency-based boot. It wasn't the default because it was cutting edge at the time.

Since Squeeze, Debian has used dash and insserv by default. So dpkg-reconfigure of dash or insserv will have no effect at all. You're already benefiting from the faster boot these things provide.

I wouldn't recommend messing with your boot now nor would I have recommended it back then, unless you understood the boot process through and through. I also wouldn't recommend using readahead or messing with runlevels as these can be intrusive changes to your system. Trust the Debian developers to know what they are doing when it comes to the preferred boot process.

Ubuntu uses a totally different boot system to Debian's, based around upstart, that in many cases will boot faster than Debian. That's just the way it is, and Debian has some good technical arguments for why they don't want to go with upstart, at least not yet (I believe one of them is that it wouldn't fit with kFreeBSD, which Debian is beginning to support). Changing would be quite complicated. Ubuntu has done it, but Ubuntu supports fewer architectures/kernels and can change faster.

If you really want to speed up boot by 3x, go out and buy a modern Intel SSD. They are getting remarkably cheap now. And you'll gain sub-10-second boot times.

[mint123]

Ok then. So Bash and Dash are both installed on LMDE. Is bash needed if Dash is used?

[jjaythomas]

I now stubled on this revalation...
(playing with "Swift Linux' (a LMDE based 32bit distro) my main sytem a HP x200 convertiable tablet in a docking base,
runs/boots faster with 32 bit distro.

Always asumed because it could run 64bit distro's, that it would run 64bit better!

It's a dual Intel Core2 runnig at 2.13ghz

P.S.still not boot as fast as Xubuntu64bit but alot faster
will try my wife's 64bit desktop (built myself from new components), that LMDE seems to boot alot slower also

J.Jay