Thursday, August 31, 2006
Deliverables 3 and 5 (SoC2006)
The new deliverables 3 and 5 were published. In the third deliverable we mention the effect of most hotspots, the procedure used for testing them and their bootcharts. Besides, it contains a group of combinations done with the hotspots and their effect. Deliverable 5 simply consists of the LSB guide for maintainers and the lintian patch to check LSB compliance. Both issues were published some weeks ago and this deliverable was just published to comply with the original deliverable list. Still two deliverables are missing: Deliverable 4: a proposal to change the boot system in debian according to the results from Deliverable 3 and further research, and Deliverable 6: the final report of the project. They are available in the deliverables webpage
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Insserv reordering and repeated init-scripts (SoC2006)
Some time ago I posted having obtained a 2 second time decrease in the boot time using insserv reordering. In that occasion, I had already deleted some repeated init scripts from the insserv modified /etc/rc2.d directory. Recently, I had problems using insserv as I thought the major change was just to change the order of some of the init-scripts (stop-bootlogd, sysklogd, klogd). Now, from a system starting in 53 seconds I got a 2 second improvement by using the same script order used some time ago. Besides, I thought I shouldn't bother to delete the repeated init-scripts as /sbin/init is supposed to ignore them. Nevertheless, by removing the remaining repeated scripts I got a further 2 second time improvement, i.e., a 4 seconds improvement! The bootcharts and init order are available at the project webpage.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
System reinstalled and testing preload again (SoC 2006)
Currently recovering from a disk failure with lots of data lost (i'll backup more often now), I'm trying to tackle with the inconsistencies sketched in the previous blog: preload and parallel booting hotspots don't perform as before. I guess the discrepancies came from playing too much with the boot process.
The new system has originally a boot time of 52 seconds and the installation of preload 0.4 on a freshly installed system gave 1 second longer boot time during the first reboot and came back to the original time after 4 reboots and goes back to 53 seconds afterwards.
The bootchart is available on the bootcharts section of the project webpage for two preload configurations.
Besides, unverbose booting was tested. Well, simply verbose was changed to "VERBOSE=no" and "VERBOSE=quiet" just making the system slower! What could this be? Manual tweaking may be probably needed. The bootcharts for the different cases are available on the bootcharts section of the project webpage
Finally, a laptop testing system was prepared for comparison. It has also a fresh debian sid installation on an external USB hard drive. The results using the laptop test bed were similar for unverbose booting although the boot time seem to be unconsistent! Around 2 second changes without networking and higher with networking. I _guess_ a possible reason is by using an usb hard drive.
The new system has originally a boot time of 52 seconds and the installation of preload 0.4 on a freshly installed system gave 1 second longer boot time during the first reboot and came back to the original time after 4 reboots and goes back to 53 seconds afterwards.
The bootchart is available on the bootcharts section of the project webpage for two preload configurations.
Besides, unverbose booting was tested. Well, simply verbose was changed to "VERBOSE=no" and "VERBOSE=quiet" just making the system slower! What could this be? Manual tweaking may be probably needed. The bootcharts for the different cases are available on the bootcharts section of the project webpage
Finally, a laptop testing system was prepared for comparison. It has also a fresh debian sid installation on an external USB hard drive. The results using the laptop test bed were similar for unverbose booting although the boot time seem to be unconsistent! Around 2 second changes without networking and higher with networking. I _guess_ a possible reason is by using an usb hard drive.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Comparing preload 0.4 and 0.2 (SoC 2006)
I've tried preload 0.2 and 0.4 to compare its effects. Unfortunately my results don't hold with the results obtained some blogs ago: preload 0.2 reduced the boot time by 2 seconds. In this occasion, time was even lost (making me remember my first tests). This may be due to some upgrades had been made to sid since.
First I tried preload 0.2 with default with 1 second lost and a modified configuration with no boot time change.
Then I tried preload 0.4 with default and modified configuration both with no time change.
The bootcharts and log file are availabe at the project webpage.
Yesterday I presented a table with hotspots combinates and unlike it was expected, preload may not be helping anymore (preload 0.4 was used).
First I tried preload 0.2 with default with 1 second lost and a modified configuration with no boot time change.
Then I tried preload 0.4 with default and modified configuration both with no time change.
The bootcharts and log file are availabe at the project webpage.
Yesterday I presented a table with hotspots combinates and unlike it was expected, preload may not be helping anymore (preload 0.4 was used).
Monday, August 07, 2006
Table preview of hotspots (SoC 2006)
Some hotpots combinations were tested. Unexpectedly, the use of several hotspots together didn't cause an arithmetic sum of boot time improvements. For example, let's consider the following hotspots and their corresponding boot times:
On the other side, while trying them together we get:
| hotspot | time |
| DASH AS SH | 4 |
| PRELOADING | 2 |
| NETWORKING | 0 |
| HWCLOCK | 2 |
| REORDERING | 2 |
| PARALLEL | 4 |
On the other side, while trying them together we get:
| hotspot | Test#1 | Test#2 | Test#3 | Test#4 | Test#5 | Test#6 | |
| INSSERV | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| DASH | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| NETWORKING | X | X | X | ||||
| HWCLOCK | X | X | X | ||||
| PRELOAD | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| PARALLEL | X | X | X | X | |||
| time improve | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 4 |
