Get Dramatically Faster Boot Times In Karmic With Ubuntu-Boot PPA

By , Published October 31, 2009

Karmic has made good progress on the road to the much-vaunted €œ10 second boot€ aim in mind for 10.04.

~ubuntu-bootBut you can get it even faster if you're prepared to take the risk!

Reader 'Ellipsis' pointed me in the direction the official Ubuntu-Boot PPA, which contains: -

Packages containing instrumentation to aid in boot performance work, and packages proposed to improve performance.

Do be aware that installing these packages isn't advised unless you're okay with dealing with any potential €œissues€ afterwards. Whilst issues aren't likely, just don't install blindly.

Install

Open a terminal and type: -

  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-boot/ppa

Or add it to your software sources using: -

  • ppa:ubuntu-boot/ppa

Now run

  • sudo apt-get update
  • sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

and you'll be prompted to install the necessary updates to your system.

Note

It will take around 2 reboots before you see any real improvement. This is because the updated packages need to create a €œpack file€ to read from when booting.

Faster? Better? Stronger? Er€¦?

Ellipsis €“ who recommended this tip to me €“ found his boot time improve from 1.04 minutes to 45 seconds. That's a respectable near 20 seconds shaved off!

I've not noticed my boot-times take as long as 1.04 minutes, but I’ll be trying this out and seeing anyway.

If you install it let us know your boot times via the comments and I’ll be sure to update the chart to show even more gains!

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. 10 Useful Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
  2. Visual Tour n' Tweak Guide To Ubuntu Karmic Netbook Remix
  3. How To Install UbuntuOne In Kubuntu Karmic
Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
  • http://twitter.com/TheSpecs Luke Dixon

    Howdy!

    Before: 1:05.3 minutes

    After: 1:00.5 minutes

    Helped but not by that much :)

  • dr. amr osman

    hi
    i love karmic even if there is a new bug of aspect ratio of my video fixed by adding “xrander -fbmm 128×80 –rate 59 –dpi 96″ to start up and it fixed my audio jack sensor and now my headphone mute my lapop speaker but i had an issue with laptop fn keys and it was fixed by patching manually evdev but the patch dont work with evdev 2.2.5 of karmic so i had to downgrade to 2.1.1 of jaunty but it boots in 35 seconds from grub to desktop I uses Fujitsu siemens Amilo pi 1505 (2007) model … so do you think i will benefit from this PPA

    • dr. amr osman

      UPDATE
      i did add your PPA
      before 35 seconds from grub msg to full desktop
      after 26 seconds

      very cool

  • archiesteel

    Before: 1:20 to working Destkop
    After: 50s to working Desktop

    Bootchart still indicates a time of 1:15, however. I imagine that this is because the desktop is brought up before everything is fully loaded (as Windows does).

  • http://brandaopeixoto.wordpress.com/ brandaopeixoto

    marcelo@ACME:~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-boot/ppa
    [sudo] password for marcelo:
    Executing: gpg –ignore-time-conflict –no-options –no-default-keyring –secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg –trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg –keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv 4537E18AF1840D5CA312AED257B0CE6D09827771
    gpg: requisitando chave 09827771 de servidor hkp – keyserver.ubuntu.com
    gpg: keyserver timed out
    gpg: Recebimento de informação do keyserver falhou: erro no servidor de chaves
    marcelo@ACME:~$

    • Anonymous

      Ubuntu’s keyserver (which is what you’re trying to contact to get the GPG key for the PPA) is down sometimes. You’ll have to wait it out. I had the same problem 30 minutes ago, but it’s up again now.

  • http://blog.mybox.ro/ Ovidiu

    After installing, my boot time decreased from 50s to 44s from grub to gdm login window. Not extraordinary, but nice.

    • http://blog.mybox.ro/ Ovidiu

      Update! After several reboots (I noticed this is recommended) I now have 38 seconds from grub to GDM login window. Very cool!

  • Ellipsis

    Make sure you restart a second time after installing. On the first restart it loaded semi-normally for me as well. If you still aren’t seeing my results well… thats odd.

    For me the ppa packages make xsplash obsolete (it is up for all of a second before the desktop starts up).

    Also note that my timings were done with a stopwatch and include BIOS etc. Moreover, they include Firefox load time (ie. until “usable desktop”).

  • Anonymous

    Before – 1’05″After – 0’50″Nice! I guess those of us with older systems (AMD Athlon XP3000+ with 1Gb RAM) will see more of a benefit.

    Edit: I should point out that these times are from GRUB to a working desktop, so include the time taken to enter my password. Given my typing speed, that probably slows it down a bit! In any case, it’s still a noticeable improvement.

  • blink4blog

    its 2 seconds faster for sure. great articles, did what it claims

  • Thomas

    This is really impressive. Just booted in under 37 seconds on my Vaio VGN-NS20S. Didn’t measure what it was previously but it’s definitely faster.

  • http://opennfo.wordpress.com Keith

    From grub to login screen:

    Before: 31s

    After: 27s

    • http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/ Jay

      Man, what have you done to give yourself such fast boot times? Mine is still over a minute and a half.

      To d0od: Maybe you can do an article about general boot time improvement tricks?

      And does anybody know what specifically this package does?

  • Saprolith

    1m 5 secs down to 37 seconds on an old Dell laptop, fresh install of Karmic and booting straight into Firefox.

    Amazing, thanks.

  • ttoms

    Was: 1m 5s ish.
    Now: 30s on 2nd boot.

    A big difference. Why didn’t this make it into karmic?

  • Anonymous

    hp mini 1151NR – ubuntu 9.10 remix –
    before 1:09 after :48 nice!

    Thanks

  • Anonymous

    Thanks for the tip. I did two tests before, updated, rebooted a few times, and did two tests after. Before it was 43s to a fully-loaded desktop, now it’s 33s. Nice!

  • cooco

    Before 54.79. Aftre 36.04 from grub to full desktop.

    • cooco

      on Thinkpad T61 3GB ram

  • http://twitter.com/TheSpecs Luke Dixon

    Howdy!My boot time is now down to 46 seconds. Really works great!Thanks! :D

  • Anonymous

    Well I installed the PPA and restarted twice, the first time it took 1.06 seconds to the desktop, then it sped up…to 1.02 seconds to the desktop. My boot time on Jaunty was a blisteringly fast 21 seconds. Karmic is a disappointment for me only on booting up, everything else is good.

  • Brad

    My Eee 1000 went from 39 to 43 seconds. Darn.

  • http://twitter.com/flux_box LuigiMarco Simonetti

    before 1.03.57
    after 1.03.49

    :( Have done something wrong?

  • Benni

    Down from 1:04 to 0:28, impressive :)

  • http://twitter.com/cryogenic Kevin

    Tried it on two computers. One, my desktop (2.13Ghz C2D, 4GB RAM, 2x80GB 7200 rpm Seagate drives) and got 1:25 before and 47 after. For what it’s worth, it took just under 20 seconds from grub to login screen, the rest was entering my password and launching Chrome.My laptop (2.4Ghz C2D, 4GB RAM, 250GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4) went from 1:09 to around 46 seconds as well. Slower to the login screen but faster from login to usable desktop. Go figure.

    Also, I’m running 9.10 64-bit fresh installs on both and using KDE 4.3 as my desktop environment.

  • karpath

    before 46.98
    after 38.26

    • karpath

      9.10 64bits on my laptop sony vaio sr21m/s

  • http://twitter.com/jonrogersuk Jon Rogers

    I went from 1:10 to 0:50 – a 20 second improvement, and I could knock more off if I didn’t leave time to choose a kernel for my multi-boot setup! omgubuntu FTW!

  • Anonymous

    I’m considering trying this out, but I’m curious about the risks involved. Is there a noted list of common issues resulting from this installation? Has anyone here experienced any problems resulting from the installation of this ppa?

    • sutdiolo

      i am curious about this too
      what do those commands do? how can they be reverted, or what kind of issues could come up?
      it sounds tempting…

    • senormota

      My shit is fucked up right now, I did this then rebooted, now i have a black screen and all i can do is use gnome do to open terminal and firefox to be able to type this message. I’m not sure how to fix this, or even what went wrong. WARNING, don’t be dumb like me and just do this, greedy for boot time. If anyone has any insight plz help

      • archiesteel

        If you have access to a terminal you should be fine. Removing the ppa (not 100% how to do this, maybe someone else will know) then doing an apt-get update/upgrade will reinstall the “official” kernel.

        • senormota

          It seems gnome-panel, compiz-fusion, nautilus, and other things are not auto starting after i stupidly tried the code in this article. Please please, does anyone know how to fix this?

          • archiesteel

            Are you sure you didn’t change anything else? The only thing this PPA changes is the kernel, sreadahead and ureadahead, and none of these have anything to do with Gnome desktop configuration.

            What version of Ubuntu are you running? I’m pretty sure this only works with Karmic.

          • archiesteel

            What happens if you remove the PPA and update your system?

            $ sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-boot-ppa-karmic.list
            $ sudo apt-get udpate
            $ sudo apt-get upgrade

          • senormota

            I am on Karmic, and I have no idea still what happened. I ended up reinstalling over my messed up install. It kept most settings and everything. Doing the apt-get update/upgrade did not work. Even going back to old kernels didn’t work.

            **************USE THIS ARTICLES INSTRUCTIONS WITH EXTREME CAUTION, I HAD TO REINSTALL **************

  • Anonymous

    Wow, it did work. Omfg :)

  • Brad

    There’s a similar post over here: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ubuntu-tip-increase-your-boot-times-with-ubuntu-boot-in-karmic.html

    You can see a lot of the same reductions in boot times, but also some concerns and unresolved problems (including my own) for those wondering about risks.

  • http://www.none.com/ Ade

    Is this going to cause any issues when any kernal updates get applied?

  • epsilon

    It works for me. From 50 seconds to 37 seconds. It’s 26% faster.

  • Anonymous

    before: 2:24
    after: 1:16

    after second boot…
    thanks…

  • Anonymous

    I have a tolerance for pain, so I gave it a shot.

    My original boot time (from very start of boot all the way until I load a browser) was 1m28s.

    After updating to this and going to second boot, my time was was 57s. Can’t complain about a 31s reduction! Although comparing to the speed of other peoples’, it sure does feel awful slow. :P

  • http://bekirserifoglu.net/ Bekir Serifoglu

    before:50 sec.
    after:30 sec. to see the almost full graphical desktop environment. This is a huge leap. I hope 10.04 will be booting a whole lot faster.

  • Anonymous

    I’ve switched back to Jaunty for now, the boot time was annoying me so much lol.

  • izza

    really usefull, thanks d00d!

    before: 1:25
    after: 0:35

    that is 50 seconds fast!
    Down to 41.1% faster.

  • Anonymous

    works for me, too.
    before: ca. 1 min 40 sec from grub to idle desktop
    after: ca. 1 min 7 sec

    Flo

  • Arthur

    My boot time went down nearly 25 seconds! Thank you so much! :D

  • Dave

    Hi, the PPA work very well for me..but my cpu frequency is changed to “performance” from “ondemand”, how can I restore cpu frequency “ondemand” as default?
    Thanks

  • Anonymous

    1.04 mins??

    with 9.04 i had a 30-40 seconds boot, with a clean install of course, and a few months ago it was below 55 secs with LOADS of apps..

    I have a 2.0Ghz proc. and 3Gb Ram, HD is sata and non-SSD, but i still think that it is an impressive time.

    I installed 9.10 a few days ago (but my PC unfortunatly broke) and the boot time left me :O , i don’t know the time, but it as FASTER then 30secs.

    I’ll install this as soon as my PC arrives from the store and i’ll let you know the times.

    Keep the good posting

  • http://www.breakerr.deviantart.com/ ANtonio

    Yayyyyy!!! from 59secs to 36secs with core 2 duo 8200, so 23secs less on each reboot and overall life who know how much time it will save me :D :p

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      What a way to look at this, but you’re right! Over a year this might save you a good few hours of your life that could be spent… gardening or making out or something! =P

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/XL5IMN4PO2XAFS7FXAWFGIFRNM KnifeySpooney

    Wow! I went from a 41 second boot to 26 seconds! I would post my bootchart for a more accurate reading but for some reason bootchart keeps recording after I already have a workable desktop.. these are estimates based on when the high CPU usage stops in the bootchart logs (which agree with my phone stopwatch time trials).

    Thanks for posting this! I was looking for a way to do speed up my boot time last night and now I’ve found this.

  • http://disqus.com/forums/omgubuntu/get_dramatically_faster_boot_times_in_karmic_with_ubuntu_boot_ppa/trackback/ osowagora@gmail.com

    I have 17 sec improvement ;] It doesn’t speed up booting before login screen obviously, but after. When I press enter after entering my pass a fully loaded gnome desktop comes nearly instantly;]

    Thanks !

  • Jim H

    from 57 seconds to 40 secs after 3 restarts.
    I’m loving it…

  • Mexican user

    I must say… Thank you OMG! UBUNTU!
    My boot time was 1:40 seconds before.
    Now it is 49s!

  • Exaviorn

    Ive got a docking system with a cd drive – to use it I have to reboot and Ubuntu will detect it….Will this booting speed decrease remove the cd drive detection?

  • almasy

    Before 11 seconds
    After – 6seconds
    A respectable near 50% improvement.

  • http://www.easyrecovery.co.uk hard disk recovery

    It’s pretty good for introducing this to us.