[Debian-eeepc-devel] 5 second boot desktop with documentation

[Jelle de Jong]

Alan Jenkins wrote:
> On 6/23/09, Jelle de Jong <jelledejong at powercraft.nl> wrote:
>> Jelle de Jong wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> The new kernel 2.6.30-1-686 came into Debian this last week and I got
>>> the itches to do some fast boot testing. The result is still
>>> disappointing for me, its still the same as a year back and the kernel
>>> even got slower compared to 2.6.29-2-486 but there are some good points.
>>>
>>> The parallel booting of script kind of works now. I added my results to
>>> the wiki I hope that's ok:
>>> http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup#Testsresultsofusers
>>>
>>> purpose:
>>> I build a lot of different linux systems, some just need fast bootup
>>> like multimedia devices, easy internet devices, netbooks et cetera. one
>>> of the requirements is maintainability and stability. I don't get
>>> maintainability by recompiling my own software, so that is not an
>>> option. What is an option is to tweak all the configuration systems I
>>> can find, test them for stability and use them.
>>>
>>> I use grub2 and it has no behavior like hiddenmenu, you can see three
>>> flashes during boot before it comes to the steady "loading system" state.
>>>
>>> result:
>>> my boot process is around 5 � 6 seconds.
>> I spoke with the debian udev maintainer after posting this mail and I
>> showed him the some of my bootchart. So he said to me it had nothing to
>> do with udev and that the modprobe process was just waiting on the
>> kernel. So I started debugging and disabled all possible hardware in the
>> bios:
>> http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=bootchart17.png
>>
>> Now you can clearly see it is not an cpu or i/o issue. So I started to
>> blacklist kernel modules one by one, all audio, all bluetooth, all usb,
>> all network stuff.
>>
>> Until I hit the eeepc_laptop module, this module is responsible for a
>> huge huge delay during bootup, and as soon as I removed it the boot time
>> speedup to around 6 seconds, and with some other tweaks I made a 5
>> second desktop WITHOUT any recompilation of code. My system only uses
>> configuration changes.
>>
>> So if we can fix the grub2 issues and make it cleaner and faster we can
>> get some really nice desktop systems.
>>
>> Am I the fist to hit the 5 second boundary without recompilation? :D
>>
>> see all:
>> http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=bootchart21.png
>> http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=5-second-desktop-bootchart-v0.1.2j.tar.gz
>> http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup#Testsresultsofusers
> 
> Wow, my 701 doesn't have this problem with eeepc-laptop.  We
> definitely need to fix that delay! Which model is this exactly?
> 
> Please check you're not using the pciehp module (with pciehp_force=1).
> I think there's a problem where pciehp caused large delays, and
> debian-eeepc enabled pciehp_force.  Nowadays eeepc-laptop is supposed
> to do the same job, without any delays.
> 
> Now you've blacklisted eeepc-laptop, it would be great if you could
> confirm the problem by running "time modprobe eeepc-laptop" on a
> running system.
> 
> If this is really eeepc-laptop, a good start would be to post the
> output of "dmesg", after booting with the option "printk.time=1" and
> loading eeepc-laptop.
> 
> Regards
> Alan

Hi Alan,

Thanks for your email, I did some testing please see the attachments.
Loading the eeepc-laptop modules takes 17 seconds! So I am sure this is
causing the delay :D

time modprobe eeepc-laptop
    real    0m17.319s
    user    0m0.008s
    sys     0m0.060s

The printk.time=1 did not do anything on my system, also see the logs,
and according /proc/modules I am also not using the pciehp module.

Best regards,

Jelle de Jong
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