AOS4.1 boot times

My boot times were some 40-45 secs from cold boot with 4.0. Now after I switched to 4.1 my boot times went over 1 minute times. After WB screen is opened and icons are shown there's busy pointer some 30 secs and the whole system is sluggish starting apps from WBStartup or opening anything else. Testing a lot of different things like removing all WBStartup stuff, removing loads of datatypes or disabling WB background pics didn't change anything. Finally I found two things on my system.

One: I commented (removed) SoundPlayer line from Startup-sequence. Somehow it was making things going slow. It didn't matter if boot jingle was disabled or enabled in sound.prefs.

Two: I removed AmiDock from WBStartup and I'm starting it now from a separate script after small (5 secs) delay.

Now my boot times are:
* From cold reset: 39 secs to full WB & 67 secs (39+28) to full AmiDock

* From soft reset: 17 secs to full WB & 48 secs (17+31) to full AmiDock

(I have two visible panels and 4 minimized panels (minimizer.docky) in AmiDock.)

(Those cold reset times includes drive detection and two Uboot countdowns. Both countdowns are set to 3 secs.)

I was shocked seeing those Pianeta videos how fast AOS4.1 boots on Sam systems. (Maybe framerate is not correct on those videos

@TSK

Put ?run? in front of addinterface in s:startup-sequence.
Comment out kickstart modules you don?t use in kicklayout, and check timeout values for UBOOT.
Remove stuff you don?t need from wbstartup,
Check S:User-startup might be things there you can remove.

Hi @LiveForIt
Check S:User-startup might be things there you can remove.
That's it! Timing should tested without it!

@LiveForIt

Quote:
I have developed several apps from scratch for OS4, I have used OS4 since the first pre-release and like I said in my first post I tested a lot of different things. So obviously I have handled all these most obvious things. Don't think I am an average Joe person. I did put AddNetinterface to a separate Startup-network script and I put "Wait 20 secs" command in the beginning of that script to make sure everything else is loaded before starting network. (Edit: Do I have to say I had "run <>nil: Execute S:Startup-network" in Startup-sequence !) And that didn't change anything. So I removed that "Wait 20 secs" from that script because networking is not the problem. And if I didn't remove certain lines from kicklayout I wouldn't be able to even boot my machine at all to OS4.1 like I have told in several "OS4.1 CD doesn't boot" threads.

@Snuffy
Quote:
My User-startup is quite short. There's only a couple of fs_plugin_cache's, mount KingCON and only few assigns. (I think MUI settings are quite important to handle in every boot if you want any MUI apps to work.)

And like I said already system becomes slow after Workbench screen is opened. LoadWB command is AFTER "addnetinterface" and "Execute S:User-startup" lines. Because WB screen is open it means that "LoadWB" line is executed already. There's only "SoundPlayer" and "Endcli >nil:" lines after "LoadWB".

PS. I think I found one problem in all Samba installation instructions. They tell always to put Samba: assign to User-startup. But User-startup is executed AFTER AddNetinterface and they tell also to use that assign in Internet prefs. Either that Samba: assign should be in Startup-sequence BEFORE AddNetinterface line OR you should use absolute paths instead of an assign in Internet prefs. I think it's pure luck if system have finished running User-startup before Roadshow and your router have finished negotiating IP addresses and Roadshow starts starting network services like Samba f.ex.

PSS. I made myself a new OS4.1 install CD yesterday and removed all USB and a1ide stuff from its kicklayout. I tested it and that CD at least boots just fine. I might try to do a fresh clean install of 4.1 someday.

@TSK

I for myself also have Samba installed and I did not put its assign elsewhere than in the user-startup. I, however did changed the AddNetInterface line in the startup-sequence by adding run <>NIL: at the begining (I can never remind myself why this is not done by default at installation). And all is working great, no slow down.

@TSK

OS4.1 takes a little less than 30 seconds to boot up from cold here (I have both boot delays in u-boot set to 1s) to a fully loaded workbench (amidock and commodities running).

The only changes I've done from a clean OS install is add "run >nil:" in front of the AddNetInterface command and installing some programs and commodities.

Are you using SmartFileSystem or FastFileSystem2 for your boot partition (I use SFS\0)? PIO or UDMA?

Now I made a new partition and formatted it to SFS for run. I made succesful 4.1 install to that partition. (And I gave it higher boot priority.) So boot times on that partition are: cold 32 secs (Uboot delays 3+3 so if you have 1+1 you can take 4 secs away from 32 so it'd be 28 secs then) and soft 11 secs to full WB and full AmiDock (19 secs without run in front of AddNetinterface). Only modification is that run >nil: AddNetinterface (and USB and a1ide removed). My original boot partition is formatted to FFS2.

@TSK

I'm here full FFS2 (what? is there still some dumb using only FFS2 out there ?) and I never experienced the sloppy time right after the delay... Except after my clean install and after i retreived my net configuration I forgot to copy back the SAMBA assign, my CPU was 100% but that was not temporary, it was permanent, I managed to find the problem by using Snoopy.

@TSK

Make sure you don't have activated drives (HD/CD/DVD) in UBOOT (anything else than 'auto') when you have removed them. That will make a boot take extra time.

@TSK

Doh, doh and doh once more. I was testing Ranger yesterday and checked what all kind of things I have on my system. I happened to look what I have in ENVARC: and ENV: and I found I had some big files there generated by my experimental piece of software I was developing some time ago. I removed those unnecessary big files. Now I have fast booting times and I have also more than 100 MB more free RAM after booting. I'm quite embarassed to tell all this because I'm suppose to be an experienced computer user. I forgot those files. So the system was slowed down because IPrefs was copying large files to ENV: (RAM). Yes I know, it was bad habit to put such files into ENVARC: in the first place. (Btw. That experimental app was a file indexing tool.)

I remember someone saying on forums that that behaviour have changed in AmigaOS lately. In older AOS versions files were copied to ENV: only when some program tried to access them. Is it really changed back to such behaviour that all ENVARC: stuff is always fully copied to ENV: at boot time ?

I've wanted to start a new thread for this. But some time ago people were storing all kinds of config files to S: which is wrong place because it's for scripts. Then people, like myself, started to put config files to ENVARC: which is wrong place many times too. So could it be possible to add a new directory, called "config" f.ex., to the standard directory structure of the AOS where people could store all config files ? Or is Prefs directory a good place to store them ? What do you think ? Some people are putting some files to DEVS: which I think is not always right place for them either.

I haven't tested cold boot time yet but soft boot is now 15 secs everything loaded (WB + AmiDock + everything).

@TSK

Good to see you found some solutions to your problem.

I was just going to add that my MicroA1 boots from powered off state to fully usable including AmiDock in 35 to 40 seconds. My system partition is FFS2 and I am using auto-detect and PIO in UBoot (long story).

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redfox