BootChart Whats your Boot time ???

[jim]

We had a thread started on boot times in the upcomming release of Fedora Core 5. So I decided to create a new thead on how to install Bootchart and generate your own bootchart.

If you have issues installing the bootchart software PLEASE create a thread labeled unable to install Bootchart. or if one exists post your comments there.

Step 1 Obtain the software

To start create a folder in your home folder named bchart Next download the bootchart-0.9.tar.bz2 from BootChart Download If you would like to try to build the rpm then go ahead but it requires a bunch of useless packages most users will not need ( unless you develop in java)
Save the download to your bchart folder. If firefox saves the files to your desktop open your home folder in Nautilus or what file browser you use and drag the download to the bchart folder

Step 2
Now open a terminal window

cd /home/yourusername/bchart

next lets extract the archive

 tar -xvf *.tar.bz2

Now once it is done, you'll have a bootchart-0.9 folder and the archive you just extracted.
Now we need to switch to root since the install script has to write to the file system

su

now run the installer

./install.sh

Now When I installed it I ddn't have grubby installed and the install script bawked at this. This is completly ok. the installer will still install the file to correct location.
if you issue this command

 ls /sbin/

you should see boochartd
also confirm it is in /etc/

 cat /etc/bootchartd.conf

you will get the contents of the file printed to the terminal window.
If you get the error like so

[root@notebook bootchart-0.9]# ./install.sh
./install.sh: line 15: grubby: command not found
./install.sh: line 16: grubby: command not found
./install.sh: line 19: grubby: command not found
./install.sh: line 20: grubby: command not found

please continue to step 3

Step 3
*** PLEASE DO NOT COPY & PASTE FROM BELOW!!! This is just a example of what your looking AT *****
We need to edit your grub.conf
while your still root

 gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

Look for this section ( Please Note you may have rhgb after the =/ secion in your Grub Conf)

title Fedora Core (2.6.14-1.1653_FC4)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.img

Now what you want to do is copy this section and paste it above the "title Fedora Core... "
so that you now have 2 entries for the same kernel
so you should have something like so

hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core Boot Chart(2.6.14-1.1653_FC4)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.14-1.1653_FC4)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.img

So now we need to edit the first kernel section by adding the bootchartd command so when the system boots it records the processes.
add the follwoing to the =/ of the top kernel line

init=/sbin/bootchartd

So you have the following ( the section in blue I added to mine so I could tell the difference between the 2 )

title Fedora Core Boot Chart(2.6.14-1.1653_FC4)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ init=/sbin/bootchartd
initrd /initrd-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.14-1.1653_FC4)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.img

Once you have your grub.conf set up correct, click save in gedit and close the file. confirm the changes with

cat /boot/grub/grub.conf

you should see your complete grub.conf and the changes you made.
Now reboot your system
Once you log back in open firefox and browse to this site
Render Boot Chart Here
scroll to the bottom of the page and click the browse button. Click Filesystem then in the right window click var then click log You should see a file in there name bootchart.tar.tgz See image below
Once the chart is rendered you can save the png file to your desktop. or where ever firefos saves your downloads. All you now need to do is open it up in your favorite image editor or image viewer and scroll to the top left corner to see how long it takes for your system to boot.

Attached is 2 charts from my notebook one is from a fresh install andthe other is after I made chages
if you ca nthink of any process that starts that should NOT be set to run for a generic install please send mt a PM so i can update DefaultServices wiki page

Happy Booting !

[bob]

Thanks Jim - it should be interesting to compare times, etc. I ALMOST made a mistake in all the cut & pasting and used your grub.conf instead of my own. Would have had a bit of a problem since I'm booting from (hd0,0) instead of (hd0,5) - Heck, I don't even HAVE (hd0,5)!

Oh yeah, I also went back into /boot/grub/grub.conf and put a "#" in front of each line on the bootchart kernel entry so that it'll be available the next time I want it, but won't automatically print up charts for my boots until then.

Anyway, my awesome boot time is 45 seconds flat! That's the record for the moment.

[jim]

Here is my latest Chart! a whopping 49 Seconds Sorry bob almost got ya!
System Specs
---------------------
Notebook
Processor: intel Pentium M 1.5 Ghz
Memory: PC3200 768 MB
HardDrive: Toshibia 5400 rpm 30GB
Bus Speed: 400 Mhz

[bob]

Close but no cigar! And I'm not even trying yet. All I've got to do is remove my printer, kill CUPS and I'll boot in about 20 sec! Now if I could just figure out why this guy 'HAL" keeps putting his demons on my machine....

[jim]

So bob How about that Boot Chart? gonna Post it?

[bob]

Sure, here it is...

As info - my system is running the following:
Asus K8V-MX motherboard
Sempron 2600 86_64
WD 80 GB 7200RPM HD
512meg DDR 400 Ram
Nvidia GeForce 420 AGP
Apacer 15 in 1 Card Reader
Lite-on 52x32x52 CDRW
Okia 450W PS
Floppy
HP Deskjet 656C Printer
LAN - cable & Linksys 4port router
SELinux & Firewall disabled (router handles, plus I keep all my valuables under my bed)

[bob]

Okay guys & gals - let's lay our cards on the table.

(Jim, jump in here if I'm off track on the details)

There was some criticism of the total boot time of Fedora vs. other distros and Windows. Some are booting quickly (*ahem, like me) and some are taking well over a minute. If YOU will take the time to run this test and post the results, along with your system specs, it will enable developers to see Real World systems and what can be modified in future releases. Let's help FC5 final release to be as good as it can be!

[jim]

i'm all for that !!!
I'm hopeing to learn from everyone elses boot charts what I can do to make my boot time faster.

[PeTzZz]

SELinux adds quite much to the boot time, but as extra security is never bad, then I keep it enabled. I am sure enabling it will add quite much to your boot time, bob. I am not so into SELinux, but after some time it added some extra time to the boot time if I remember correctly and then stayed constant.

If I remember correctly then my computer's boot time was around 45 seconds, but I cannot check it at the moment. I have AMD AthlonXP 2500+ unclocked to about 1700+ (stability problems) and 512 mb PC3200 ram.

[cybrjackle]

Jezzzzzzzzzz I can only get mine down to 30 seconds

This is my Dell Latitude D600 with a 1.6 and 2gb of ram.

[bob]

Alright... back to the drawing board for a minute or two....

[cybrjackle]

Alright... back to the drawing board for a minute or two....

Sorry to burst your bubble, but your going to have to do even more work, I cleaned up some more services that I didn't need and now I'm at

14 second boot time!!

[jim]

So how did you achive a 14 second boot time?

[jim]

Ok I'm working on it!!!

[bob]

Jeez - beaten by a Pentium 1.6 too! Thought they took longer to add 2 + 2 than that! Okay - gotta unplug everything and then plug my 120V box into a 220 outlet and then...