Ubuntued

I’m running Ubuntu on a quite descent laptop configuration. Up to now, Ubuntu’s booting was taking around 3 minutes, a bit too long. After some analysis and research, I was able to reduce that to under 35 seconds. If you’re having a similar problem, the following procedure might be helpful.

1. Install bootchart, a cool small application that allows you to see what’s happening on boot time.
   Type the following in the shell:
   sudo apt-get install bootchart
   This will create on each boot a log image in /var/log/bootchart/
   describing the runtime booting processes.
2. Reboot your machine and check the created log image. In my case, the boot sequence looked as follows:
   
   Booting was taking 177 seconds.
3. Analyse the log. We notice that usplash, a user application that draws a splash screen on boot (thus dispensable), seems to be consuming way too much CPU time, and for too long. A search on Ubuntu forums shows that usplash is a bit buggy, and that this boot problem is quite common.
4. Disable the concerned process. For usplash, the following will do:
   sudo apt-get remove usplash
   Now reboot, and check the new created image log. In my case, it looks like that:
   
   Down to 31 seconds!
5. Remove bootchart if you don’t need it any longer, otherwise a log will be created on each boot. Execute:
   sudo apt-get remove bootchart

Important note: Don’t try to be smart and disable all boot processes (just in case you were thinking about that!). Make sure you know what you’re doing.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 am and is filed under packages, troubleshoot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.