Re: X.org idle for ~6 seconds on startup

[Chipzz <chipzz ULYSSIS Org>]

Something I wrote a whole time back:

"""
I cut down the start-up time for gnome from over 27 seconds to under 17
seconds (gdm login screen to fully loaded desktop). This is about 60%
speed increase (on top of my head). Without recompiling anything.
So how did I do it? Two things:
1) I mounted /usr with noatime. This shaves off one second, and also
   one second for firefox to start up (from 14 to 13 seconds).
2) I stripped my X11 config. While I was looking in to letting X itself
   start faster, I disabled some modules, and threw the local xfs server
   out of the fontpath. It really isn't needed on modern X installs any-
   way, and isn't even installed in most cases. (it's the line with
   :7100 in it in your config).
So what modules did I disable? Basically, they boil down to 3 categories:
a) vbe, ddc and int10: VESA BIOS Extension, Data Display Channel and Real
   Mode emulator. Those modules are used for probing the capabilities of
   your monitor, and enabling a second video card to be soft-booted.
   This will mostly impact the start-up time of X itself.
b) record: commonly used in server testing.
c) xtt, bitmap, speedo, type1: all font rasterizers; the first one was
   the predecessor to freetype, the other 3 are all remnants of the old
   font system X used. Old applications may still need some of those
   (last 3), but modern toolkits like Gtk+ 2 and Qt all use freetype
   (which you should not disable by any means). If you're running only
   Gtk+ and/or Qt apps, try commenting out some of these. Some old apps
   may still need these, but I had no problem running Adobe Acrobat
   Reader (which is not based on a modern toolkit).
DISCLAIMER: Only do this if you know what you're doing. I am NOT respon-
sable if you fuck up your system and can't get it back in a running state.
And by all means, back up your config file!!!
You need to stop and start your display manager afterwards (restart will
NOT suffice). But test this by manually starting X with: "X :1" from a
console, or "startx -- :1".
"""

please read the disclaimer though. This really may fuck up your system
if you don't know what you're doing (and you may need some of the
modules I disabled).

kr,

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005, Lorenzo Colitti wrote:

> From: Lorenzo Colitti <lorenzo colitti com>
> Subject: X.org idle for ~6 seconds on startup
>
> Hi,
>
> as part of my work in looking at gnome login times I instrumented the
> whole process of loading gnome from gdm starting from when gdm starts up:
>
> http://www.gnome.org/~lcolitti/gnome-startup/bootcharts/instrument-gdm.png
>
> One thing I don't understand is why the XOpenDisplay() call from gdm
> takes so long (11 seconds!). Granted, for the first 5-6 seconds the X
> server is pegging the CPU, but after that the system seems mostly idle
> for about 6 seconds.
>
> gdm is completely idle during that time (it's sleeping in a select() if
> I remember right). I have tried stracing the X server and it seems that
> some of it is waiting for the font server, which I'm not running. But
> even after I took commented out FontPath "unix/:7100" from xorg.conf
> there are still 3-4 seconds in which the system is mostly idle that I
> cannot account for.
>
> Any ideas?
>
>
> Cheers,
> Lorenzo
> _______________________________________________
> desktop-devel-list mailing list
> desktop-devel-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
>

Chipzz AKA
Jan Van Buggenhout
-- 

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                 UNIX isn't dead - It just smells funny
                           Chipzz ULYSSIS Org
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"Baldric, you wouldn't recognize a subtle plan if it painted itself pur-
 ple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing 'subtle plans are here a-
 gain'."