Booting faster with texas flood boot-scripts

[sdboyd]

A summary so far:

On Nov. 12, I tried to install the texas flood boot-scripts. Lots of errors, and it wouldn't install. I have completely re-written the buggy install script for texas flood and modified it for VL.

NOTE: Install problem solved. The install script was not buggy!

Sunday - Nov. 15th:
I tried to bootup using texas flood, and when it ran thru rc.vlinit, it would switch to runlevel 6 (reboot). I did some hacking on the scripts, got it to boot to the kdm login screen, but I didn't have any use of the keyboard to enter my password. Did some more hacking, got it to bootup, but only to text-based login (no graphical display manager). It's probably just something I commented out that I shouldn't have... I'll keep at it...

Nov. 17 - 18 (Wednesday - Thursday):
After major re-write of /sbin/texasflood-boot, the system booted up very quickly to kdm. But, I found out that rc.M never runs. Therefore, all the stuff in rc.M never gets loaded and/or started. Which is a lot of stuff - most modules, networking, syslogd, vl-hot, etc.) Still working on it (when time permits)...

Also - using Google translate, I have translated all the Portuguese text to English.

Scott

[uelsk8s]

I am not sure why you are getting install errors with the texas flood pkg.
It installs here without any.
are you installing on light, or std?

[stretchedthin]

I have to admit I had no trouble with the install of the original texas-flood file either.  I installed on VL standard, maybe sdboyd has installed on VL-light and is short a dependency.

[sdboyd]

OK - here's what happened...
* I unpacked the texas flood file into /root/texas-flood .
* If you look at the install script, it assumes it is being run from / . 
* The two lines having to do with "sbin/.#start-resulinux" result in one error message.
* The last 12 lines of the script don't have a leading "/", so the script looks for "etc/servers.d" and "etc/init.d" in sub-directories *below* /root/texas-flood/install/ . (Lines 5 & 6 *do* have a leading "/", so the mkdir worked.)
* I didn't have the /etc/init.d directory, so even if the last 12 lines *had* a leading "/", those lines would still have produced errors.

(I've pasted the output from running the install script below.)

Yes - you are correct - I'm running VL 6.0 Lite. No dependency problems - it's simply a shell script...

Code:

root:# ./doinst.sh
Texas Flood 2.1 Open Source
Created by the brazilian Luciano Andress Martini
Setting up INIT scripts...
md5sum: /etc/inittab-tx2: No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `/etc/inittab-tx2': No such file or directory
Installation Completed! Thank You!
Please edit/read /etc/texasflood.conf for more informations
Link the high priority services in /etc/servers.d
For example: ln -sfv /etc/init.d/apache /etc/servers.d
Link the low priority services in /etc/autoexec
Do not link standard texas flood services like, udev, cups, hal, etc
A backup of your inittab is in /etc/inittab-backup
ln: creating symbolic link `sbin/.#start-resulinux': No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 25: cd: etc/servers.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 26: cd: etc/servers.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 27: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 28: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 29: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 30: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 31: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 32: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 33: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 34: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 35: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory
./doinst.sh: line 36: cd: etc/init.d: No such file or directory

Scott

[stretchedthin]

I've never installed that way, maybe it works. I don't know? Here is a way you can help me find out.
Since you have tried an install using the doinst.sh script, I'm curious what you see when you try the following command (as root)...

root:# find / -name "texasflood*"

You should get something like this as output...
/sbin/texasflood-start.working
/sbin/texasflood-boot
/sbin/texasflood-halt
/sbin/texasflood-reboot
/sbin/texasflood-start
/etc/texasflood.conf
/etc/texasflood-bootexec

If you do then great. I've learned something.

If you don't then try this instead.
Open a terminal as root in the directory containing the texas-flood tlz and enter this command...
root:# vinstallpkg texas-flood-2.1-i586-1vl60.tlz
or (same thing just without the v)
root:# installpkg texas-flood-2.1-i586-1vl60.tlz

(the installpkg command can be used on .tlz, .tgz, and in VL6.0 soho, txz packaged files.)

You should see the install happen without any error message in the terminal.

Then to test the install try this again as root...
root:# find / -name "texasflood*"

This time you should get the output we've been looking for.
/sbin/texasflood-start.working
/sbin/texasflood-boot
/sbin/texasflood-halt
/sbin/texasflood-reboot
/sbin/texasflood-start
/etc/texasflood.conf
/etc/texasflood-bootexec

Let me know if this makes any difference.

[sdboyd]

I've never installed that way, maybe it works. I don't know? Here is a way you can help me find out.
Since you have tried an install using the doinst.sh script, I'm curious what you see when you try the following command (as root)...

I ended up installing the files manually, so they are all in the correct directories. Using the doinst.sh - they were NOT  installed correctly. That's why I re-wrote the install script, but now I know that I didn't need to do that (see below).

If you don't then try this instead.
Open a terminal as root in the directory containing the texas-flood tlz and enter this command...
root:# vinstallpkg texas-flood-2.1-i586-1vl60.tlz
or (same thing just without the v)
root:# installpkg texas-flood-2.1-i586-1vl60.tlz

I never even considered using installpkg! I tried it on another partition with VL 6.0 Lite, and it installed just fine - no error messages.

Scott

[stretchedthin]

How is texas-flood working on vl-light.  I'm still experimenting on standard, but there are glitches.  I ran vliloconf and set my bootsplach to one of the frame buffer modes so I could see the text and texas-flood is clearly running.  It just doesn't seem to be shaving off as much time as anticipated.

[sdboyd]

How is texas-flood working on vl-light.  I'm still experimenting on standard, but there are glitches.  I ran vliloconf and set my bootsplach to one of the frame buffer modes so I could see the text and texas-flood is clearly running.  It just doesn't seem to be shaving off as much time as anticipated.

See my first post above...

[sdboyd]

Nov. 24 (Monday):

Last Friday, I had problems with hotplug and wifi not working. Found out that rc.udev was missing. Copied it from another partition, and my modified texasflood scripts finally were working correctly. But - I wasn't happy with the boot time. It was too long.

So... I removed texasflood and went back to previous config. I timed the bootup. Then,  I properly installed texasflood this time and changed just a few settings in texasflood.conf. Re-booted, and timed it again. This time - everything is working properly - all services that I need, including hotplug and wifi. The times below are timed both with a stopwatch and through bootchart. The stopwatch time is timed from when I hit enter in grub to the time the kdm login screen comes up. Yes - there is quite a discrepency in the bootup times of the two methods of timing. I can't explain it....
(This was tested on VL Lite 6.0 on an R51 Thinkpad with 1.6 Mhz Pentium M.)

No texasflood - standard VL scripts: stopwatch: 70 seconds  -  bootchart time: 55 seconds
With stock texasflood scripts:  stopwatch: 53 seconds  -  bootchart time: 39 seconds

About 15 seconds quicker, but I may be able to shorten that a little bit more. I also wonder if it would be beneficial to re-compile a kernel with only what I need, not the do-all kernel that gets installed. (In other words - I don't need raid, serial port support, or parallel support, etc.)

Scott

[stretchedthin]

Could you give me an idea as to what settings you changed after you reinstalled the default texasflood.

[sdboyd]

Could you give me an idea as to what settings you changed after you reinstalled the default texasflood.

Here are the changes I made in texasflood.conf:
hald="0"
hostname was changed - (I don't call my laptop "localhost")
network="1"
acpi="1"
check="0" - (This is because the default script only checks reiserfs filesystems. I'm using ext3.)
gi_command="kdm"

[sdboyd]

I'm no longer working on texasflood on my Thinkpad. I bought a new Acer Aspire 5517 laptop on Black Friday. Last night (Dec. 2nd), I finally got VL Lite 6.0 running on it, but no wireless working YET. I originally tried installing VL Standard Gold 6.0, but the Xserver wouldn't start, and I couldn't decipher the error messages. I created three partitions for Linux, so I may try VL 64-bit 5.9 within a few days.

[sdboyd]

I've been testing the texasflood boot scripts on my Acer 5517 laptop with VL 6.0 Lite and jwm. These times are from when I press enter in grub to when the login screen comes up. Here's my results:

With stock boot scripts: stopwatch time: 48 seconds -- bootchart time: 42 seconds
With texasflood scripts: stopwatch time: 36 seconds -- bootchart time: 30 seconds

By watching the kernel boot messages scrolling up the screen, I can see that the kernel takes approx. 20 seconds to load. (Timed with a stopwatch.) Bootchart shows that it takes a little over 16 seconds to load, so apparently bootchart doesn't start timing right away.

I haven't optimized any boot scripts yet (such as rc.M), but that would probably only save another few seconds. I might move on to testing VL64 6.0 instead...

Scott

[haywire]

I don't want to sound negative, but is it worth all this time, trouble and effort to get your computer to boot 10 seconds faster?

Maybe its just me, but I rarely have to reboot. Actually, I have to fix my swap (I don't have a swap at all) the only time I have to reboot is when I have WAY too much stuff open and use up all real ram, the system starts hanging. This is because there is no swap I think...

Anyhow, I rarely have to reboot the computer so I don't think its worth the effort to get my computer to boot 10 or 15 seconds faster.

What are your boot times like with this scripts verses without them?

Steven

[stretchedthin]

I had a similar experience.  Boot times were only slightly faster with texas-flood, plus I could no longer use the init command in the terminal when using texas-flood.  Maybe someone out there know a way around these issues, but in the mean time I've given up.