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Date:      Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:12:08 +0200
From:      Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net>
To:        Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au>
Cc:        Doug Barton <dougb@freebsd.org>, David Naylor <naylor.b.david@gmail.com>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: rc improvements (wanted?)
Message-ID:  <20080718141208.21091i4jkh44jc74@webmail.leidinger.net>
In-Reply-To: <20080718071806.GV62764@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org>
References:  <200807172056.08835.naylor.b.david@gmail.com> <487FCA89.2010308@FreeBSD.org> <20080718083725.97823be0tg13fn6s@webmail.leidinger.net> <20080718071806.GV62764@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org>

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Quoting Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> (from Fri, 18 Jul =20
2008 17:18:07 +1000):

> On 2008-Jul-18 08:37:25 +0200, Alexander Leidinger =20
> <Alexander@Leidinger.net> wrote:
>> Are you aware that the parallel starting in Solaris 10 reduced the
>> booting time by a nice percentage?
>
> Given that Solaris boots in geologic time, this probably wouldn't
> be difficult.

How do you define "booting Solaris"? Do you include the extensive =20
tests prior to loading the kernel into this? I'm not talking about the =20
time a 25k needs (even when you reducing the amount of testing on the =20
system controller, it takes a long while until it reaches a state =20
which I would call the start of the boot of the OS). We are talking =20
about the pure userland part of booting. What is done during the =20
startup of important programs in Solaris is not unreasonable (and =20
similar/comparable between Solaris versions), and still, there's a =20
nice difference between Solaris 9 and 10 if you count the time until =20
you can start to do useful stuff.

>> If yes, do you expect that FreeBSD
>> behaves significantly different or do you "just" want to see numbers?
>
> Parallel starting is not guaranteed to be an improvement.  Starting a
> whole pile of processes that are I/O bound during initialisation
> (think squid or some databases) may be worse than starting them one
> at a time.  Likewise, a whole pile of processes that are CPU bound

It depends, think about independent disks and or keeping the squid =20
data in RAM (e.g. tmpfs).

But this doesn't matter, we will always be able to come up with =20
situations where the parallel start is not a good idea. We don't come =20
by default with such a situation and I'm sure a lot of configs out =20
there that don't fall into this class. Based upon your argument we =20
could say we can not enable parallel starting even if we see it is an =20
improvement for the reboot after the installation.

What I wanted to know is if there's an substantial argument (it can =20
not behave similar to Solaris, because of A and B), or if he "just" =20
wants to know what the difference on FreeBSD is.

> will just thrash the scheduler.  (Though parallel starting of I/O and
> CPU bound processes should be a win).

You forgot about round-trip-time bound processes (basically processes =20
which wait for an event to occur before they say they are successfully =20
started), and we have several of them.

Bye,
Alexander.

--=20
Those who hate and fight must stop themselves -- otherwise it is not
stopped.
=09=09-- Spock, "Day of the Dove", stardate unknown

http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID =3D B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID =3D 72077137



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