ureadahead hangs on reprofiling after deleting pack file

[Gurmeet]

Binary package hint: ureadahead

ureadahead hangs on reprofiling after deleting pack file.

This is basically what I do :
1. Check bootchart has files:
      # ls /var/log/bootchart/*.gz

2. Delete pack file (to aid in force-reporfiling)
     # sudo rm /var/lib/ureadahead/pack

3. Do a force reprofile
       (Alternative 1) # sudo ureadahead --verbose --force-trace
       (Alternative 2) # sudo ureadahead

The following is the output:
Counted 2 CPUs

<And then a blank screen>

After that nothing happens. Basically:
  - no pack files are created in /var/lib/ureadahead/
  - No Disk I/O. checked using 'iotop'.
  - No significant memory or CPU increase as registered in 'top'.

I have had ureadahead run for hours at a stretch and nothing happened. When I press Ctrl + C, it quickly flashes a list of files on the screen (most of it in the /var/cache) directory and exits. Pack file is created, but it is in the range of KB (not MB).

My expectation was that ureadahead would read the logs from bootchart and determine the important files that are needed during boot. These files would be cached as a single place to aid in faster boot times. I am not sure that is happening and the bootchart output (as png) has nothing to prove to the contrary.

I get around 65s - 80s (would have expected ~25 s) boot times with a HP DV6500 laptop running a T7700 processor (more or less state of the art) with 2 GB physical RAM. HDD is Seagate 5400 RPM, 120 GB and most of it is empty, It's a single partition and I see no reason why ureadahead will need any of the files in the /home directory. I have most of the services disabled through System > Preferences > Startup Applications and Boot Up Manager.

OS is updated on a daily basis and contains the latest patches and fixes automatically applied through the Ubuntu Repository.

# uname -a
Linux 2.6.35-23-server #41-Ubuntu SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux

# apt-cache policy ureadahead
ureadahead:
  Installed: 0.100.0-8
  Candidate: 0.100.0-8
  Version table:
 *** 0.100.0-8 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status