Faster system init: runit ?
Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: Faster system init: runit ?
started by: The_Pirate
Posted by The_Pirate on Sep. 15 2006,19:39
Hi -I am very happy with DSL, and use it for a bunch of rather old and small PC's and laptops. The only thing is, when installed to a harddisk, it seems to plough trough the usual sysv-init. Very, very slowly. This seems to be quite a weighty argument for Win98...
This is perhaps the slowest thing happening in a Linux box - any Linux box - and, especially on a i586/133 laptop it becomes tedious. May i humbly suggest that the developers cast a weary eye on something called 'runit' - a small and seemingly fast sysv-init replacement. It can be found at < the runit webpage >.
I could imagine that a small script could read the configuration, after the Knoppix-live-cd routine have got the system up and running - and then transfer it to runit, when performing a HD install. But, i'm just guessing.
I am sad to say, i'm a malebarian developer: so far, anything i touch, will beyond any reasonable doubt FUBAR. But if anybody else can put this into good use....
Ladies, gentlemen - thank you for your patience with me.
Posted by WDef on Sep. 20 2006,11:44
Interesting. I might try this out for myself. I agree the slow boot is a bore, not just on dsl either.The tried 'n' true conservative init process does seem safe, though.
Posted by WDef on Sep. 23 2006,15:34
Today I've been mucking around with runit on a hd install of dsl.Have replaced init, runit is working. However:
1. Would like to work out how to logon without running a new getty as a service and then switching to tty5.
2. Getting a clean shutdown is currently a bit convoluted - seems I have to quit X, switch tty's again, run /etc/runit/3, hit ctrl-c (or is it ctrl-alt-del?) some unspecified number of times, hope for the best etc. Commands like 'shutdown -r now' no longer work and need to be replaced by appropriate scripts.
3. Also be nice to auto start X as user dsl without the getty and logging on.
These things are probably work-outable.
Re speed: the main gains of runit are in starting up services *in parallel*, which means a fat distro like Fedora that starts lots of services by default (too many - I switch many of them off) would benefit enormously from runit.
But dsl doesn't run much in the way of services normally ...
Re boot speed: the tedious part of a dsl hd install boot is knoppix-autoconfig regenerating *everything* every boot. Some can be switched off by boot params, some need hacking of knoppix-autoconfig to switch off. Nothing to do with init.
Nonetheless Runit is light, and the service management features look like they'd be really nice to use once learned.
Posted by The_Pirate on Sep. 23 2006,19:22
Thanks for trying it! 
I guess your problems may be exactly what services to start and stop - i admit, i'm not exactly good with this.
My idea was to take the configuration from that darn knoppix-autoconfig, transfer it into something that runit could use - and _then_ there ought to be a speedy boot! I'm sorry, when reading my original message, i have explained that poorly.
I guess it would also give a speed gain to just transfer it to sysvinit, but why not go for the Full Monty...?
Anyway, thank you for trying. I may not be totally insane after all...
Posted by humpty on Oct. 01 2006,03:05
some suggestions by fozner;< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....t=15176 >
Posted by WDef on Oct. 07 2006,10:42
I fixed the issues I raised, but got tired of fiddling and turned that partition back into swap. I compiled runit, but there are deb packages in testing (i think). There are also some other alternative init schemes out there too.