IDEA: Shortening boot-time

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 10:11:12 +0200, Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl> wrote:
> read my original post before responding. The nfs case has been taken
> into account and in this case, gdm start is delayed till after networking.

I read and it looks like an extra 17.3 layers of fragility over an
already too fragile script based process. Lots and lots of special
case checking for whether someone need a service earlier or not. I
can't imagine these extra checks for mundaneness come without a cost. 
But since this is a script solution, I'm sure you can mock up
something that other people can test and report numbers on to get a
better feel for how much the pre-prefdm file checks end up costing
you.

My real problem is the idea that pre-prefdm can be taught ahead of
time about which fstab
extries to be considered important enough to delay starting gdm for: 
"(netfs mounts like /archive or /lotsofmp3s really aren't all that
interesting to get mounted instant IMHO)"

Once a local sysadmin is editing fstab for their local network
filesystem topology the init process can't assume that /archive isn't
vital. I would suggest doing this another way having a new option in
fstab line that can be used by the local admin to designate a network
filesystem as non-vital/vital  during the bootup process. That way
pre-prefdm can look for the existence on non-vital in each netfs and
if atleast one is flagged as vital gdm isn't started. We can argue
about the default assumption pre-prefdm makes about vitality, but its
clear to me that pre-prefdm shouldn't assume any network mountpoint is
non-vital unless the local admin marks it that way with the
appropriate option in the fstab file. Since netfs mountpoints are
local admin created and not something the installer creates, no
assumptions about which network mountpoints are boot-up ignorable can
be made. Let the local admin mark those fstab entries as non-vital to
recover a faster graphical bootup in this scheme. Kudzu uses a kudzu
option in fstab to manage lines, whats one more extra fstab option
that mount doesn't understand.

-jef"<a christmas story>F-R-A-G-I-L-E, huh, must be Italian</a
christmas story>"spaleta