Ubuntu

Slow Boot-up on Fiesty

Asked by Steve Garton

I've been running Feisty since Herd 1, and it has always been significantly slower than Edgy to boot up. For example, this morning it took 4 mins and 22 seconds to boot up to GDM, which seems a long time to me. I'm using a reasonable spec Laptap (Intel Centrino Duo, 1GB Ram - more details can be supplied if needed), so I just assumed it would be 'one of those things' that would just be sorted before release. It's getting close to release now, and no-one else seems to be having a problem, so I need to know if there's anything I can do locally to speed this machine up?

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Huygens
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Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey) said : 		#1

Hi! You could try installing BootChart which can give you a graphical representation of where the time is going?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BootCharting

If you can't decipher the output from bootchart, feel free to make it available online and let us know where it is so we can have a look-see.

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Best Huygens (huygens-25) said : 		#2

Hello,

I had also experience slow boot. My laptop is an intel centrino (1st gen, so core solo) with 1GB. I never got close to 4minutes though ;-) but it was still really slow compare to Ubuntu 6.10.
I have found 3 "culprit" for the poor performance:
1) previous network configuration was getting within the way of Network Manager.
2) mdadm was kind of conflicting with other settings and mounting my partition was real slow.
3) hal service is slow to launch.

So far I have only manage to solve the two first one. If it applies also to you here is how:
1) I have edited /etc/network/interfaces and commented out all line except those regarding the loopback interface (lo). Seeing that you have been using Feisty since herd 1, I assume that you have a good knowledge of Linux. If you need further help on how to edit the file, please feel free to let me know.
2) mdadm is used for software raid (as far as I understood). So I was pretty sure I was not using it. If you are sure that you are not using it, you can remove it. Just open Synaptic ("System" -> "Administration"), look for mdadm and remove it. When applying the change, you will get a frightening warning. Read it carefully and be sure that you are not using this package.

I hope this will help you having a faster system. I have never measured the time my system use to boot. But it should be around 1 minute or less (I think even much less...). I will try it next time I boot.

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Huygens (huygens-25) said : 		#3

Test performed: 61 sec from the grub menu to the GDM welcome sound (which occurs a second after I see the login)
You should notice that I have Apache, MySQL, SSH and Samba as extra services on start-up.
Seeing your hardware, it is definitively too slow. I hope my above suggestion do help you. As for the boot charting suggested by A. Pope it could be a really good option in your case.

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Steve Garton (sheepeatingtaz) said : 		#4

Thanks Huygens, that solved my question.

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Steve Garton (sheepeatingtaz) said : 		#5

Commenting out things in /etc/network/interfaces has taken my boot time down to ~31 seconds! Many Thanks. I was also intrigued by the boot chart process (http://www.sheepeatingtaz.co.uk/images/bootchart.png) I may use this in future, thanks!