[Gutsy] very slow gnome startup

[Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson]

I installed from the tribe3 gutsy gibbon and then updated the system (without having logged in yet) from console (ctrl-alt-F1).
When I log in via gdm it takes literally minutes for the gnome desktop to show up (leading to me installing links).
I seriously want to help fix this problem, but I don't know what information would be helpful. Please reply and I will give whatever info you require.

Thank you for your attention.

[Marco Rodrigues (gothicx)]

You still have the same issue with the latest updates ?

[Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson (gnarlin)]

Yup, I sure do. I have found a way to manually fix it. I open the run dialog (alt-f2) and run gnome-terminal. I then run: sudo killall -9 gnome-panel and the panels finally pop up.
Maybe that helps with narrowing down the problem for you :)

Hope this helps.

[Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson (gnarlin)]

I also found out that I can't run the "run" dialog (alt-f2) unless I first wait for a long while first. I know when when the background image I choose appears.
I have a new machine with components I picked out myself. I have a brand-new computer.

[Marco Rodrigues (gothicx)]

Have you tried to remove .gnome2, .gnome, .gconf, .gconfd directories on your home ? after you need to restart...

[Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson (gnarlin)]

I tried that but without success I'm afraid. I also took the time from after pressing enter after entering my password until a full gnome desktop was up. It took 3 minutes and 10 seconds. I did that twice with the same result.
I also remembered that I'm using the nvidia blob. I'll remove that, change the driver to the free one (nv) and see if it makes a difference. I could also try to reinstall if the nvidia blob does something naughty.
Thank you for your time :)

[Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson (gnarlin)]

I tried again after removing the nvidia driver and changing xorg.conf. It took the exact same time. 3 minutes and 10 seconds. Also, this didn't happen in 7.04 (with or without the nvidia driver).
So, what's next? Are there any logs or stuff that I can give you?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you use the desktop effects? Does it happen without them? The bug tracker is about describing issues so they can be fixed, maybe you can try using the support tracker if you are trying to figure what is wrong and then open a bug when you have details

[Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson (gnarlin)]

Yes, this happens without desktop effects.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you have the issue with an another user on the same configuration? Maybe that's simply your box being slow? What configuration do you use?

[Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson (gnarlin)]

Yes, I have the same issue when I try to login with a new user. Also, I have previously stated that I have a new machine. My box is not slow ;-/
mb: abit in-9 32x-max (with upgraded bios)
cpu: E6600
ram: 2GB (1066mhz)
GFX: Geforce 8800 gts (640mb)
This also doesn't happen with 7.04 where login is almost instantaneous.
After I get back home from work I will post the xorg.conf and all relevant logs I can think of that might help.

[Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson (gnarlin)]

Please let me know if anything else could help in solving this.
Also I will post a note here if any update fixes this. I'll also try to reinstall from the next daily iso
and see if this goes away or not.
Thank you for your help.

[Marco Rodrigues (gothicx)]

Why you don't install nvidia drivers ? You're using the old ones.

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty#How_to_setup_nvidia_drivers_in_7.04

[darx (rabidphage)]

I too have the same issue. Although it doesn't take as long, the time from login to desktop is significantly slower than that of feisty. I'm on gutsy tribe4. My laptop has an ati x300. So mine's not an nvidia issue.

[stefab (bluefuture)]

I too have the same issue but it doesn't take minutes.. it still under 1 minute for session loading. I also don't have an nvidia and i use the default generated xorg.conf file.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

what window manager do you use?

[stefab (bluefuture)]

metacity... i notice that on the first login there is a heavy load of hard disk. If i logout and then i login again the session startup time is normal. So this issue is related to the first login after boot.

[Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson (gnarlin)]

I tried all of that. I have since switched to 7.04 because my holiday was up ;(
Hopefully this will be fixed before 7.10 is released. Sorry I can't be of any more help on this issue, even though I brought it up.
Cheers.

[darx (rabidphage)]

Same problem here. ATI x300. Gutsy. Boots up to the login screen pretty fast. Then hangs around for a minute or two till a usable desktop.

[Christopher Denter (dennda)]

I have a similar issue. Installed Gutsy Tribe 5 on my laptop and then updated it to the latest available version.
It doesn't take minutes but is pretty slow (I didn't take the time but it is significantly slower than it was on feisty, as far as I can tell.).

After I enter my password the mousecursor shows up in front of an empty screen. After some time GNOME starts to load the panels, the launchers (on the panel) and the background.

If you need any information or logs just let me know.

regards

[Ashley Hooper (ash-hooper)]

Dennda, just out of interest, have you tried booting with ACPI disabled to see if this helps with the speed?

[Vladimir Yatulchik (yatul)]

I also have similar problem on my Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop with Intel integrated video. But it takes more than 10 minutes between entering login credentials and showing gnome panels, if I previously removed .gnome2, .gnome, .gconf, .gconfd.
If I hasn't cleaned up configs than it only shows background and thats all. Alt-F2 doesnt'works, Ctrl-Alt-F1/F6 works fine.
Gutsy fully updated, network-manager was removed (works incorrectly with my WiFi).
Disabling ACPI doesn't help.

[Vladimir Yatulchik (yatul)]

Actually I solved problem. My loopback network interface was misconfigured.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Does anybody still have an issue?

[Christopher Denter (dennda)]

Yes, me
It's still the same with latest updates & latest kernel.

@ Ashley: Yes I tried that. It didn't help at all.

Any other hints / questions?

regards

[Jonathan Strander (mblackwell1024)]

I noticed this as well with everything up to date. Login time has to be roughly 30 seconds to 1 minute. Sometimes the background image refuses to load if I've done a logout and login as well (unless I open the Appearances GUI).

[Christopher Denter (dennda)]

Just as a side note: Everything's ok with XFCE.
(Dunno if this is of any help. Just to make sure.)

regards

[Nic (ntetreau)]

Mine is not as bad but about a minute to lod the gnome desktop. I have a core2duo and nvidia. I' ll try all the possible solutions listed here and report back.

[ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo)]

Shouldn't strace make it possible to see what's going on?

[Jonathan Strander (mblackwell1024)]

Possibly, but what should be straced exactly?

[mysticmatrix (mishra-anurag07)]

I also confirm this problem under Metacity(I have G965, blacklisted at compiz :( ). It occurs even after turning tracker off.
Here's a small sicussion at ubuntuforums
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=563530

[Henrik Binggl (henrik-binggl)]

Anotherone: Same result for me. Not 3 minutes but it is slower compared to feisty.
I did a fresh beta install. Happens if 3D-effects are enabled or disabled.

Linux aragorn 2.6.22-12-generic #1 SMP Sun Sep 23 20:03:18 GMT 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo)]

If anybody has time to debug this thing, have a look here:

http://www.gnome.org/~lcolitti/gnome-startup/analysis/

[Gunny (richard-gunn)]

same issue here , slow to load full dekstop. Also notice a long delay when hitting the power/logout button. If I I restart GDM from console it loads very quickly. This behaviour is the same with or without Compiz

[cokelly (okelly-ciaran)]

Not much to add but: me too. Just over one minute after login. All suggestions here don't do the trick. I've already tried disabling various services one by one but to no avail. Of course, as bugs go it's an irritation rather than a catastrophe.

[Kyle M Weller (kylew)]

same problem here as well, running latest Gutsy Beta as of 10/6/07 with all updates:
Gnome takes a minute to load on my P4 3.0 ghz 768 meg ram, effects off and nothing else running, default install. Nothing swapping, ram is fine, feisty loaded gnome up instantly after password screen, now 60+ seconds is a bit too much...

[ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo)]

I have filed a bug upstream:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=484358

[Christopher Denter (dennda)]

As Christoffer suggested I created these bootcharts:
http://www.the-space-station.com/~dennda/gallery/bootchart/gutsy-20071008-1.png
http://www.the-space-station.com/~dennda/gallery/bootchart/gutsy-20071008-2.png

I hope they are of any help for you.
The login really is much too slow.

regards

[Brandon Snider (brandonsnider)]

There are two things added to the gnome panel that weren't there in previous distros. One is the "User Switcher" and the other is the "Deskbar". They are side by side. One or both of them is causing this problem. When I removed them both, Gnome loaded in a few seconds, as expected.

[ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo)]

@dennda: you have to patch bootchart to profile the login. Otherwise you'll get the boot process.

@Brandon: they are not the problem. You have to remove them, reboot and then login to get a accurate measurement.
There is a regression even when not having the deskbar and user switch on the panel.

[bonsiware (bonsiware-deactivatedaccount)]

I removed "User switcher" after installation and "Deskbar" just now, rebooted, but the problem is still there...

[cokelly (okelly-ciaran)]

Thanks for that tip Jean-François: that has my time from login down to ~40 seconds. Most acceptable!

[Stevie (stevie1)]

well, i read on ubuntuforums.org that this issue seems solved in hardy.
i guess there wont be a "fix" for gutsy.

concerning the gdm login...
id rather wait a bit more on the complete boot process than after the gdm login.
that readahead thingy had some positive impact here.
before i had to wait a minute til i could work, now its 29 seconds.
honestly, 1 minute is anacceptable. not even windows takes that long.

[C Anthony Risinger (extofme)]

agreed that tip/link from Jean-François worked very well.

i still get the flashing gnome-panels and am seeking a solution to that, the readahead hack sped everything up.. i would make a bootchart but i have changed things, but the blackout after my gnome-panels dissapears is less than 10 seconds now, nearly half the time.

very nice thank you.

[bonsiware (bonsiware-deactivatedaccount)]

some people have this problem since gutsy:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-session/+bug/128803

there's someone who has tricked with bootchart to let it log login process
too...

On Feb 8, 2008 4:10 AM, sweetsinse <email address hidden> wrote:

> agreed that tip/link from Jean-François worked very well.
>
> i still get the flashing gnome-panels and am seeking a solution to that,
> the readahead hack sped everything up.. i would make a bootchart but i
> have changed things, but the blackout after my gnome-panels dissapears
> is less than 10 seconds now, nearly half the time.
>
> very nice thank you.
>
> --
> [Gutsy] very slow gnome startup
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/128803
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[bonsiware (bonsiware-deactivatedaccount)]

sorry!
I posted in the wrong forum...

[bereanone (bereanone)]

Your comments were not really constructive, helpful, or nor do they in
anyway acknowledge a very real problem with an ubuntu installation
gone very wrong. It takes nearly 5 minutes to boot. Nothing that I
have done changed any configuration other then stock installation. I
have enjoyed the look into the Unix world enough however that I
decided to give Unix a closer look and finally bought a Mac.
Hopefully with professional coordinated support I will not experience
the same problems. If the lack of support in the Ubuntu community
breeds frustration in new users, it is hardly a fix for more
experienced users to take the tack of less that constructive criticism
of that frustration. Reeling off benchmarks of seconds means
absolutely NOTHING to those forced to wait nearly 5 minutes for THEIR
particular machine to boot up.

On Feb 7, 2008, at 4:52 AM, Sebastien Bacher wrote:

> Those comments are not really constructive, there is no obvious bug
> there and the issues described might be a collection of different
> things
> and incorrect user configurations. I did new dapper, feisty and gutsy
> installation on a non-too-new machine some days ago using the same
> partition and looked at the login speed there. Dapper takes 15 seconds
> from gdm login validation to an usuable desktop loaded, feisty takes
> 18
> seconds, gutsy takes 26 seconds. Without deskbar-applets in the
> configuratin there is almost no difference between feisty and gutsy.
> The
> login is clearly slower nowadays but that's only some seconds on a
> default installation and can be explained by the features added since
> dapper. Now it's likely that some users run into differents bugs, but
> ideally whoever has the issue should try to look at if a stock user
> has
> the same slowness, if not using tracker, deskbar-applet, compiz etc
> change the speed, etc and comment there
>
> --
> [Gutsy] very slow gnome startup
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/128803
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.

[bereanone (bereanone)]

On Feb 7, 2008, at 4:52 AM, Sebastien Bacher wrote:

> Those comments are not really constructive, there is no obvious bug
> there and the issues described might be a collection of different
> things
> and incorrect user configurations. I did new dapper, feisty and gutsy
> installation on a non-too-new machine some days ago using the same
> partition and looked at the login speed there. Dapper takes 15 seconds
> from gdm login validation to an usuable desktop loaded, feisty takes
> 18
> seconds, gutsy takes 26 seconds. Without deskbar-applets in the
> configuratin there is almost no difference between feisty and gutsy.
> The
> login is clearly slower nowadays but that's only some seconds on a
> default installation and can be explained by the features added since
> dapper. Now it's likely that some users run into differents bugs, but
> ideally whoever has the issue should try to look at if a stock user
> has
> the same slowness, if not using tracker, deskbar-applet, compiz etc
> change the speed, etc and comment there
>
> --
> [Gutsy] very slow gnome startup
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/128803
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.

[C Anthony Risinger (extofme)]

if you want it free youve got to be willing to spend some time wrestling with it..

luckily ubuntu has worked very well on the several machines i have installed it on, for myself and others. however every single one of them had quirks, some of which took a LONG time to figure out, and other less serious ones i have yet to figure out.

the nice part about problems is it forces you to get personal with your machine and actually learn what the computer is doing rather than simply looking at a splash screen?

if you can, put ubuntu back on the machine, all updates, then make a bootchart.. that little program was very useful in diagnosing problems because it visually attaches the time elapsed to individual processes. it has allowed me to explore the scripts in my system i did not even know about.

sudo apt-get install bootchart

the charts (pictures) will be in /var/log/bootchart/

make one of those during the 5 minute wait and maybe we can visually see the culprit in your specific installation.

another possibility would be to disable usplash altogether, so you can see the output instead? an easy way to accomplish this:

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

then look under System > Settings > Start-up Manager
good luck to ya

[spanella (spanella)]

personally bootchart won't do anything for me since the problem is not on booting but on gnome login. I believe someone above was able to make it work all the way through the desktop loading, but i don't think i have the technical skills to make that work. If there is an easier way that you know of to analyze the gnome login please let me know and i would be glad to find the problem. however, until that time Gutsy will continue to login to gnome in 2-3min for me.

hoping a clean install of Hardy will make this all go away in 2 short months

[Kai Schroeder (kai-schroeder)]

I have created a graph of a login to gnome in hardy using the method described here:
http://www.gnome.org/~federico/news-2008-02.html
I have applied the patch there to the ubuntu version of gnome-panel (I have actually dropped ubuntu patch 16_* because I was to lazy to have a look why that patch could not be applied to the instrumented source).

I have done the profiling using a freshly created user and I have created the graph during the second login to that users profile. I have stopped shortly after I had a usable gnome-terminal after about 60 seconds.

Looks like there is something strange going on with pulseaudio and esd at the beginning of startup. Compiz wastes a large amount of time finding out the current configuration using glxinfo and nvidia-settings. There are lots of top_panel size requests, I have not yet looked what that means exactly, though. It would also be interesting to know what happens at second 26 - apt-cache and modinfo take a huge amount of time there which is probably not needed at that point of time. I don't know how useful this is, but perhaps someone gets an idea.

[Kai Schroeder (kai-schroeder)]

And attached the strace logfile which I have used to create that graph.

it says there for the esd pulseaudio wrapper
8107 1203029028.058727 read(18, "[esd]\n# autospawning is not reco"..., 4096) = 368

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your work on that, those are useful informations we can use to try working on the login speed

[Patrice Vetsel (vetsel-patrice)]

Just for informations :
http://blog.kagou.fr/post/2008/03/06/Chronos-US-version

[Christopher Denter (dennda)]

Thanks for taking the time to make such comparisons.

I, however, cannot believe they are 100% correct. At least on my machines (and all others I saw) feistys gdm-login was much faster than gutsys...

regards

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

did you read the graph correctly? it indicates that feisty login takes 15 seconds where gutsy takes 22 seconds and hardy 29 seconds

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 9:24 AM, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> wrote:

> did you read the graph correctly? it indicates that feisty login takes
> 15 seconds where gutsy takes 22 seconds and hardy 29 seconds
>

Yes, but it has been the experience of a large part of this thread that
Gutsy is nowhere near only 22 seconds. More like double that. In my
experience, Hardy is faster than Gutsy. It's definitely closer to Feisty
range.

--
Mackenzie Morgan
Linux User #432169
ACM Member #3445683
http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com <-my blog of Ubuntu stuff
apt-get moo

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

you have to consider that is a stock installation and that the machine might be faster than yours, on a some years old a default gusty installation takes around 26 seconds there

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

It seems that Hardy is even slower than Gutsy... In my computer, Gutsy took ~34 secs to load, but now Hardy takes ~1 minute. Almost twice!

[Kyle M Weller (kylew)]

Yes I agree, HARDY TAKES FOREVER TO BOOT! gosh! it really sucks lol,
but hardy looks nice tho :]

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could users having the issue try to get startup graphs similar to the one sent before?

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

I'll be glad to send you those graphs. How can I generate them? Thanks.

[Kyle M Weller (kylew)]

yes I'll be glade as well, how can I graph my startup as well?

[enigma_0Z (enigma-0za)]

Added nautilus. I believe this is the offending application.

[enigma_0Z (enigma-0za)]

Could someone try this for me:

open a console and do killall nautilus.

If it works (like it does for me), the whole desktop will freeze for roughly the same time as when starting up.

I'm pretty sure that this is a nautilus issue, as my system freezes right before nautilus comes up (no desktop icons), and when it unfreezes, I get them back. I've hacked a workaround for this bug by using the readahead trick here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=565651

With this in place, it's not too bad. But there's a pause before GDM comes up now (I'd imagine that readahead is that chugging away here...). After that pause, everything's pretty snappy though.

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

On Mon, 2008-03-10 at 18:30 +0000, enigma_0Z wrote:

> If it works (like it does for me), the whole desktop will freeze for
> roughly the same time as when starting up.

I tried it, but nautilus resumes in normal times... so it's something
else for me.

I have a gut feeling:

I am trying kernel 2.6.25-rc, which works very well for my laptop, minus
the fact that sometime the gnome login fails with strange dbus messages:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10041 . Now the thing is that
when it happens, the login continues and I can enter gnome without my
setting, but _there is no delay_. So I suspect that the delay some kind
of timeout on dbus/socket interaction of gnome-settings-daemon.

Romano

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

I've created an image of the GNOME logging process with bootchart, I'm attaching the image, hope it helps.

[Patrice Vetsel (vetsel-patrice)]

How can I patch bootchart (for gnome login time) ?

[Patrice Vetsel (vetsel-patrice)]

Is this this patch in http://www.gnome.org/~lcolitti/gnome-startup/analysis/ that we should use ?
Is it possible to have an already bootchart packaged ?

[peddy (peddy22)]

how exactly do I use the .diff file to patch it?

I know I need the source and need to use the 'patch' command, but that's about all I know :P

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

You can install bootchart, move the init.d stop-bootchart somewhere else, use autologin and run the stop-bootchart start manually after login

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Would be nice to try again on hardy beta and note if the issue is resolved, we have been doing several changes recently:

- jockey and update-manager delay their update to no slow the login
- deskbar-applet is not in the default configuration and tracker indexing is not enabled by default
- gdm is doing preloading now

Those changes should make login quicker now

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

Thanks, Sebastien. I attach my bootchart I've generated following your instructions. Hope this helps.

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

I'm glad to say that now, in Hardy, GNOME takes ~35 secs to load... It's as fast (or better say, as slow) as Gutsy...

[Stevie (stevie1)]

im not sure but i think the problem comes from GDM and not gnome.
when starting X via startx, i got the feeling that gnome boots much faster.
but i could be wrong...

[peddy (peddy22)]

Here's my one, not completely sure how to read it. Hope it helps.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the bug is not a nautilus one

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

a (small) part of the problem *might* be due to the recent documents? I have no idea if .recently-used.xbel is used during startup, but if it is, it is possible that it contributes to making the login time worse.

http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/?p=317

Examples of performance decrease because of this phenomenon:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=512108
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=500772

[pescobar (pescobar)]

I am using jaunty x86_64 and found a quick fix by just deleting $HOME/.gconfd/saved_state

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

Afaict, the bootcharts are pretty old. It could be interesting if someone could make new login bootcharts for current versions (gutsy? really!?) such as Karmic and Jaunty. And perhaps with gnome-shell in karmic too.