Switch to SystemD

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hal8000
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Switch to SystemD

Post by hal8000 »

As a suggestion I'd like to see a future realease of Mint switch from Upstart to SystemD.
SystemD is on use in Fedora and Arch linux and parallizes the boot process.

My desktop running Arch starts in less than 8 seconds:
systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 1952ms (kernel) + 5272ms (userspace) = 7224ms
systemd-analyze blame
1000ms systemd-vconsole-setup.service
847ms systemd-fsck@dev-sdb8.service
803ms systemd-binfmt.service
797ms systemd-fsck@dev-sda12.service
730ms systemd-logind.service
518ms polkit.service
510ms systemd-modules-load.service
452ms dev-hugepages.mount
407ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
394ms systemd-journal-flush.service
375ms dev-mqueue.mount
373ms systemd-udevd.service
351ms lm_sensors.service
298ms systemd-remount-fs.service
280ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
245ms proc-sys-fs-binfmt_misc.mount
209ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
203ms systemd-user-sessions.service
184ms udisks2.service
177ms network.service
143ms console-kit-log-system-start.service
106ms upower.service
100ms dropbox@anc.service
94ms home.mount
82ms console-kit-daemon.service
67ms systemd-sysctl.service
43ms media-share.mount
40ms systemd-random-seed-load.service
31ms tmp.mount
30ms systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
3ms sys-kernel-config.mount
1ms sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount

This is without an SSD just an ordinary SATA II hard drive. Same hardware Mint 14 also boots around 25 seconds,
again much better than anything Microsoft can do. The biggest improvement is with slower hardware, my old
Centrino laptop took about 90 seconds to load Mint with Arch on SystemD its 16 seconds.

Again SystemD may not be for everyone so just a suggestion for a later release.
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catweazel
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by catweazel »

As long as Mint remains an ubuntu derivative that probably won't happen unless ubuntu starts to use it. For starters it requires a customised kernel, which would immediately prevent kernel updates being used from ubuntu.

That said, it may be long before ubuntu does move...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTMyMDE

Edit: On startup time, my machine romps home in 11 seconds flat, to a fully functional KDE desktop with the network active. I suppose I could cope with better specs.
"There is, ultimately, only one truth -- cogito, ergo sum -- everything else is an assumption." - Me, my swansong.
hal8000
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by hal8000 »

catweazel wrote:As long as Mint remains an ubuntu derivative that probably won't happen unless ubuntu starts to use it. For starters it requires a customised kernel, which would immediately prevent kernel updates being used from ubuntu.

That said, it may be long before ubuntu does move...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTMyMDE

Not a customized kernel, but a modern one, I'm still using an older 3.7 kernel on Arch, which I have not tweaked. However you can customize your kernel for even greater boot speeds. Under 10 seconds is pretty impressive but some "Archers" tweak their kernel and get under 2 second boot with an SSD.

The only problem with Arch and any other cutting edge distribution, is the speed it moves at. Xorg is up to version 1.14 which means that with
my ATI HD5770 card I have to regress back to using Xorg 1.12 (to use catalyst drivers) so my Arch cannot be updated without breaking something
else. This is why its good to fall back to something less fast paced and stable like Mint.
altair4
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by altair4 »

It may not be a question of kernel levels or superior technology or any of these things. It may come down to testosterone levels.

SystemD was invented by Red Hat.

Upstart was invented by Ubuntu.

Those of us of the male persuasion have an inherent tendency to defend our positions independent of facts so you may never see a full conversion to SystemD in the Ubuntu-based Mint offerings.
Please add a [SOLVED] at the end of your original subject header if your question has been answered and solved.
Monsta
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by Monsta »

hal8000 wrote:systemd-analyze blame
Hmm... this looks cool 8)

BTW, is systemd even available in the Ubuntu repos? A search query gives only a bunch of related libraries. Or did they rename something?
On the other hand, Debian has it (that version seems to be horribly outdated though), and there's this wiki page on how you can try it out (and possibly bork your system, of course :)).
hal8000
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by hal8000 »

Monsta wrote:
hal8000 wrote:systemd-analyze blame
Hmm... this looks cool 8)

BTW, is systemd even available in the Ubuntu repos? A search query gives only a bunch of related libraries. Or did they rename something?
On the other hand, Debian has it (that version seems to be horribly outdated though), and there's this wiki page on how you can try it out (and possibly bork your system, of course :)).
No, not available for Mint or Ubuntu. When linux boots, it boots to a particular runlevel . Services are started in each run level by initialisation (init) scripts. Traditionally the way linux boots is by starting one service, wait for it to finish loading and then start another script. Distros used either SysV or a BSD style
method of booting all done ny scripts in either /etc/init.d/ or /etc/inittab

Upstart has been in Ubuntu since Version 10.10 and was a method to parallelize the boot script by starting one service before another has finished loading.
SystemD is an alternate boot process to Upstart, which again loads start services in parallel and can replace either SysV or BSD init scripts.More about
SystemD below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd

The Arch documentation is fairly comprehensive:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd

but as you can see, not a distribution you can use unless you have some experience using linux. Fedora and other distros use it as mentioned
on the wikipedia link, but Arch is in a league of its own when it comes to bootingthe fastest to boot (that I've tried).
Monsta
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by Monsta »

Yeah, I know. I was quite impressed by the booting speed of Manjaro (Arch-based distro). Maybe I'll try systemd in LMDE once a recent enough version comes there, who knows.
Zauber Paracelsus
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by Zauber Paracelsus »

I've just started using Linux Mint today, I can honestly say that I using SystemD is a very bad idea.

Under Arch Linux, I had been dealing with more and more stability problems, whereas I had almost no stability problems prior to its adoption of SystemD. It got to the point where I considered it less stable than Windows XP, and I had originally switched to Linux because of instability in Windows XP!

The final nail in the coffin was a system update and reboot, upon which I found that networking, graphics, and half my USB ports were all hosed, and most of the daemons in /etc/rc.d were missing. I installed Linux Mint, and things are working just fine (except with some issues with PulseAudio, which I will be purging sometime soon).

As far as performance is concerned, I received absolutely no improvement on boot performance with SystemD, and my 3.5ghz quad-core processor isn't exactly what you'd call slow.
AJ1000

Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by AJ1000 »

I have had the same experience as Zauber, SystemD is unstable for me as well.
hal8000
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by hal8000 »

Monsta wrote:Yeah, I know. I was quite impressed by the booting speed of Manjaro (Arch-based distro). Maybe I'll try systemd in LMDE once a recent enough version comes there, who knows.
I've not tried Manjaro. How fast did it boot on your hardware?
hal8000
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by hal8000 »

Zauber Paracelsus wrote:I've just started using Linux Mint today, I can honestly say that I using SystemD is a very bad idea.
Under Arch Linux, I had been dealing with more and more stability problems, whereas I had almost no stability problems prior to its adoption of SystemD. It got to the point where I considered it less stable than Windows XP, and I had originally switched to Linux because of instability in Windows XP!

The final nail in the coffin was a system update and reboot, upon which I found that networking, graphics, and half my USB ports were all hosed, and most of the daemons in /etc/rc.d were missing. I installed Linux Mint, and things are working just fine (except with some issues with PulseAudio, which I will be purging sometime soon).

As far as performance is concerned, I received absolutely no improvement on boot performance with SystemD, and my 3.5ghz quad-core processor isn't exactly what you'd call slow.
The difficulty with Arch is that the base system installs only to a shell prompt. You need to configure everything yourself,
including partitions, filesystem table, users and services. There are probably no two distributions alike. Before systemD my system would take about 25 seconds to load, with systemD under 8 seconds and no instability, on an Intel Core i5 750.
Sometimes it can be difficult getting help from the Arch forums though, particularly if you touch on something that has been answered in the Wiki.
However, speed is not everything and whichever way a future mint system boots, there are no loosers , apart from steve Balmer and microsoft.
gnudude

Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by gnudude »

any chance you could post a bootchart?

what kind of desktop you running on arch?

what services/apps do you have starting at boot?
gnudude

Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by gnudude »

I haven't found systemD speeds things up much. Of course I do not run/start a lot at boot so systemD might be more effective in that case.

But then wouldn't it be just as effective to start those things after you are up and running...assuming you can of course.

12 second boot year ago with debian 5 running a basic gnome desktop
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8521/bootchart.png

and 14sec last year with debian wheezy running gnome-shell and gdm3
http://postimg.org/image/kegjfplul/
hal8000
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by hal8000 »

Here is my Centrino laptop:
systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 3.883s (kernel) + 13.709s (userspace) = 17.593s

Below are services:
Systemd-analyze blame
7.639s netctl@wireless\x2dwpa.service
1.960s systemd-logind.service
1.242s systemd-vconsole-setup.service
1.061s systemd-udev-trigger.service
1.041s sys-kernel-debug.mount
1.040s dev-hugepages.mount
1.039s dev-mqueue.mount
1.019s systemd-sysctl.service
1.005s sys-kernel-config.mount
992ms tmp.mount
992ms systemd-remount-fs.service
715ms polkit.service
614ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
567ms systemd-journal-flush.service
539ms systemd-udevd.service
264ms upower.service
224ms systemd-fsck@dev-sda9.service
222ms udisks2.service
181ms systemd-random-seed-load.service
115ms systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
102ms dhcpcd.service
84ms systemd-user-sessions.service
60ms home.mount
40ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service

Dont think it can produce charts like bootchart as systemd-analyze blame runs in terminal
some cpu stats
cat /proc/cpuinfo
--snip--
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.73GHz
stepping : 8
microcode : 0x20
cpu MHz : 800.000

I think under 18 seconds is not bad for an old Centrino, I also
got an old screebshot somewhere of my old Pentium 4 desktop
which also used to run Debian, Managed to get it down to about
18 or 20 seconds, but 5 years ago, there was a lot less services
running and the desktops were smaller and lighter, still a very
impressive boot time.
gnudude

Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by gnudude »

hal8000 wrote: Dont think it can produce charts like bootchart as systemd-analyze blame runs in terminal
And if someone isn't running systemD they cant run systemd-analyze blame. So if we are going to make any comparison we need something...well...something to compare. I assume bootchart would show the speed increase that systemD provides? I have no idea what 'blame' analyzes/measures so no way to truly know if anything is actually faster. I don't even see a login manager listed. Once again I would have to wonder what desktop you are running, services started, and so forth. If you are simply starting less at startup then systemD isn't the reason for the speed increase, at least not entirely, but rather you are simply running a slimmer system.

Let me see what i get for my bootchart on my old cheapo R61e thinkpad with cinnamon rc15. It is somewhat tweaked but nothing too slimmed down. I guess bootchart will work with upstart. I think this thing is using upstart. This is the first ubuntu based system I have ran since dapper...
hal8000
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by hal8000 »

[quote="gnudude" I have no idea what 'blame' analyzes/measures so no way to truly know if anything is actually faster. I don't even see a login manager listed. Once again I would have to wonder what desktop you are running, services started, and so forth. If you are simply starting less at startup then systemD isn't the reason for the speed increase, at least not entirely, but rather you are simply running a slimmer system.

Let me see what i get for my bootchart on my old cheapo R61e thinkpad with cinnamon rc15. It is somewhat tweaked but nothing too slimmed down. I guess bootchart will work with upstart. I think this thing is using upstart. This is the first ubuntu based system I have ran since dapper...[/quote]


SystemD measures kernel time, so its accurate. If I use a stopwatch its the same time, "blame" is just the programmers name to list task duration.
Both my laptop and desktop are running KDE, login manager is listed second from top:

1.960s systemd-logind.service

The Arch wiki has a lot more detail on SystemD link below. The times for desktop, 7220ms ( I measure about 7 or 8 seconds on a stopwatch) are in first post.
Hardware is Intel i5 750, 4G DDR2 RAM and a SATAII hard drive.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd
gnudude

Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by gnudude »

WOW! I have to agree, for sheer boot time systemD is amazing. I had already wiped my mint install so I played with it on debian jessie/sid with gnome3 and went from about 14 second boot time to like 7 seconds. This is on my laptop which is about 5 years old, has a 2ghz dual core, and 1gb of mem.

I am not sure it is worth the trouble especially when dealing with a system that uses upstart but it is very cool!
hal8000
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Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by hal8000 »

gnudude wrote:WOW! I have to agree, for sheer boot time systemD is amazing. I had already wiped my mint install so I played with it on debian jessie/sid with gnome3 and went from about 14 second boot time to like 7 seconds. This is on my laptop which is about 5 years old, has a 2ghz dual core, and 1gb of mem.

I am not sure it is worth the trouble especially when dealing with a system that uses upstart but it is very cool!

How long did Mint 14 with upstart take to load for you on the same hardware?

I found my best ever boot time with Debian Lenny back in 2007 , with InitNG the prequel to Upstart (or something else). 18 seconds on a Pentium 4,
which at the time was good, hard drives were only ATA33.
js3915

Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by js3915 »

altair4 wrote:It may not be a question of kernel levels or superior technology or any of these things. It may come down to testosterone levels.

SystemD was invented by Red Hat.

Upstart was invented by Ubuntu.

Those of us of the male persuasion have an inherent tendency to defend our positions independent of facts so you may never see a full conversion to SystemD in the Ubuntu-based Mint offerings.
Probably why Ubuntu is going with Mir or trying to ^^

I dont know much about the differences, but ive played with Fedora recently and at least for me how they do the processes seems to make bit more sense than ubuntu's way. Will be intereting to see if ubuntu makes a switch or in that effect Debian since debian that both are ultimately a derivative of
asbesto

Re: Switch to SystemD

Post by asbesto »

IMHO, systemd is a drama, a cataclysm.

http://www.linuxadvocates.com/2013/05/systemd-accident-waiting-to-happen.html

I want my SYSV init script back. they were PERFECT.

:shock:
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