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Author Topic: slow boot: normal or configuration problem?  (Read 7114 times)

Offline GNUser

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Re: slow boot: normal or configuration problem?
« Reply #15 on: November 21, 2019, 10:29:48 AM »
Rich, you are a genius.

Boot time when my onboot.lst contains this:
Code: [Select]
Xorg-7.7.tcz
aterm.tcz
fluxbox.tcz
xf86-video-intel.tcz

Was 24 seconds in the original post. With the modified fontconfig.tcz (and fc-cache -sfv 1>/dev/null & in bootlocal.sh) it's now 10 seconds.

Offline Rich

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Re: slow boot: normal or configuration problem?
« Reply #16 on: November 21, 2019, 10:44:01 AM »
Hi GNUser
Rich, you are a genius. ...
I think that's pushing it. Let's just say that even a blind squirrel will find the occasional nut. :)

Offline GNUser

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Re: slow boot: normal or configuration problem?
« Reply #17 on: November 21, 2019, 10:52:17 AM »
Whatever you say ;)

Thanks a lot for all your help. Needless to say, there's absolutely no way I would have cracked this without your help. I'll be educating myself about fontconfig...

Cheers,
Bruno

Offline GNUser

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Re: slow boot: normal or configuration problem?
« Reply #18 on: November 21, 2019, 11:05:55 AM »
BTW, I also use TCL on my netbook-turned-router (which is CLI-only, no X). It would boot slowly until I installed haveged.tcz on it.

haveged.tcz has been installed on my T400 laptop (the machine we've been troubleshooting) all along, and is started by bootlocal.sh. It's puzzling to me that haveged doesn't seem to help fontconfig get its random numbers. I wonder why.

Bottomline is that with or without X, low entropy can cause slow booting. haveged.tcz by itself seems to take care of the problem if the machine is CLI-only. If X is involved, it pulls in fontconfig.tcz as a dependency. Since fontconfig doesn't seem to be helped by haveged, best to put fontconfig's startup job in the background so that it doesn't hold things up.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2019, 11:18:31 AM by GNUser »

Offline GNUser

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Re: slow boot: normal or configuration problem?
« Reply #19 on: November 21, 2019, 05:00:06 PM »
juanito and curaga: I'd like to suggest that

/usr/local/tce.installed/fontconfig in fontconfig.tcz be changed from

Code: [Select]
#!/bin/sh
fc-cache -sfv 1>/dev/null

to

Code: [Select]
#!/bin/sh
fc-cache -sfv 1>/dev/null &

I've tested the change and it dramatically* improves boot time, without any negative side effect as far as I can tell.

* Minimal onboot.lst: 10 sec boot time (vs. 24 sec without the change); very fat onboot.lst: 29 sec boot time (vs. 41 sec without the change).
« Last Edit: November 21, 2019, 05:09:47 PM by GNUser »

Offline curaga

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Re: slow boot: normal or configuration problem?
« Reply #20 on: November 22, 2019, 12:42:58 AM »
Should be ok. I'd say remove the -v at the same time, no need for verbose when nobody sees the output.
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline Juanito

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Re: slow boot: normal or configuration problem?
« Reply #21 on: November 22, 2019, 12:55:55 AM »
done in x86 and x86_64 repos

Offline GNUser

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Re: slow boot: normal or configuration problem?
« Reply #22 on: November 22, 2019, 06:55:43 AM »
Nice! Thank you.