Ubuntu Boot Times From Linux 4.6 To 4.15 Kernels

[caligula]

Back home, here's my Ryzen 1700 and Gentoo with systemd:
Startup finished in 11.592s (firmware) + 1.600s (loader) + 2.741s (kernel) + 1.273s (userspace) = 17.208s

Prolly could be faster, but has 4 SATA drives, 2 network interfaces, around 10 USB devices, two graphics cards from different vendors..

[caligula]

I didn't know we could get that impressive userspace startup speed you guys get.

But then again I didn't try any optimizations, that's pretty much all stock.

Try systemd-analyze critical-chain / blame / plot

It will show what services are to be blamed.

[glasen]

"systemd-analyze" times are misleading because the tool also counts the time of userspace services which are running in background when the system has finished booting and is ready to use.

On Debian and Ubuntu the service "apt-daily" is run each day on the first boot. The system boots as fast as without this service but "systemd-analyze" counts the seconds up until it is finished.

Another example why some users have lower boot times is for example the usage of a static IP address and have disabled NetworkManager completely. This also "saves" a few seconds in "systemd-analyze".

[andrei_me]

My custom 4.14.0 kernel and systemd without unused services boots much faster.
xfce@ryzen5pc:~$ systemd-analyze time
Startup finished in 2.005s (kernel) + 5.998s (userspace) = 8.003s

My system: Debian testing Xfce, Ryzen 5 1600, Gigabyte RX560 2GB, 2x4GB 2666Mhz RAM, Asus Prime B350M-K motherboard, KingSpec 256GB sata III ssd.

Use a non debug 1000Hz timer kernel and remove unused sevices, your computer runs faster.

My normal 4.13 kernel, without modifying any out-of-box configurations of Manjaro KDE boots much faster.

[andrei@andrei-note ~]$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 6.007s (kernel) + 2.142s (userspace) = 8.150s

My system: Manjaro KDE, Intel i7-3612QM, 2x8GB 1600 MHz RAM, Samsumg 250GB 850 EVO.

Use a default config kernel and out-of-box Manjaro, your computer runs faster.

[caligula]

So Plasma is not really the bad guy here, but NetworkManager and exim4:

 11.980s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
5.176s exim4.service
1.804s ssh.service

The other services are taking just milliseconds to start. I'm definitely getting rid of exim4, but I rather keep NetworkManager.

Thanks for the tips guys!

You can change the dependencies. It's a graph based dep system. If your desktop functionality doesn't need exim4 or sshd, you can start them on the background.

[grok]

Funny how I think NetworkManager is actually good, I don't hate it

Another example why some users have lower boot times is for example the usage of a static IP address and have disabled NetworkManager completely. This also "saves" a few seconds in "systemd-analyze".

And if you only have wired interfaces, at least built-in or PCI ones you can also use dhcp with no NetworkManager or wicd
Tho sometimes it may be nice to do silly things, e.g. you check a box in a phone's setting, plug it in and you get instant USB networking

[andrei_me]

Your times proves that do not use default config kernel. Your kernel boots 4 seconds slower than mine.

Yes, but one doesn't need to mess with kernel options to have good boot times, that was my initial point

[leipero]

Even UEFI + Windows 8 is somewhat impressive.
Now if you've ever seen an old PS/2, 386DX with 10 MB RAM (some on a long MCA board!) it spent most of the time "counting" the RAM, then the DOS 5.0 booted rather quickly. If someone were to make an add-in board with three gigs I think it would spend four hours or more on this.

Windows 8+ is not impressive at all, it is dog slow, since Windows 8 Microsoft uses "hybrid hibernation" trick (I've just pulled that name out of m... there's probably some fancy name for it). On machines with slow HDD's, Windows 8/10 boot times are catastrophic (compared to Windows 7, XP ofc. is far ahead all of them...), it literaly takes minutes to boot everything up and finally stop HDD activity. Developers at Microsoft were probably forced to come up with some solution like "half hibernation" with Win 8+ because they did put so much cxxp in their OS it was simply impossible to keep boot time decent.

I remmember back in Windows 7 days (~2009), lot's of services used "Automatic delayed" start, but superfetch would start being active after ~4 minutes after boot, and start HDD activity for next few minutes to suposedly "speed up" things, all it ever did for me is slowing my system down, naturally, disabling all non-needed services and superfetch would speed up boot time significantly. That was my default behaviour when installing Widnows 7.

On topic, I see some posts are mising loader and firmware, this is on Arch with GNOME 3, nothing really tweaked, added few services (for TRIM, dns and fsck etc.):
Startup finished in 9.834s (firmware) + 1.601s (loader) + 2.278s (kernel) + 1.494s (userspace) = 15.208s

[arjan_intel]

Startup finished in 5.7099s (firmware) + 25.3ms (loader) + 500.4ms (kernel) + 726.9ms (userspace) = 6.9626s

(that's to gnome3 GDM)

[glasen]

Startup finished in 5.7099s (firmware) + 25.3ms (loader) + 500.4ms (kernel) + 726.9ms (userspace) = 6.9626s

(that's to gnome3 GDM)

Coreboot and a self-build kernel?