How to test booting time of thinclients

This explains how to make a bootlogd file from thinclients. This is useful for debugging the boot process, or just comparing boot times, of different versions or solutions.

In order to run bootchartd on the diskless clients i did the following

  1. installed bootchard on the ltsp server in question
    • this is optional, since you can copy the bootchartd files from anywhere
  2. copy the bootchart files into the thinclient chroot
    • cp /sbin/bootchartd /opt/ltsp/i386/sbin/bootchartd
    • cp /etc/bootchartd.conf /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/bootchartd.conf

  3. added init=/sbin/bootchartd to the append line in the file /var/lib/tftboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

bootchart will then write a bootchart.tgz file in /var/log on the thin client when you boot it. i copy this file to my homedir with scp. In order to draw images from the bootchart.tgx file you can use the tools in the bootchartd package, or the webtool at http://www.bootchart.org/download.html

Some examples

Placing some install logs and bootcharts here to compare different ltsp-client versions. All tested on the same thinpod thin client it have a bios boot time of 21 seconds.

debian-edu-RC2

Fresh install of RC2, + security upgrades (20060314) + bootchartd boots and works ok,

new boot after a touch /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/ssh/sshd_not_to_be_run

0.82

pere fixed 2 bugs in ltsp-build-client 

checking if file exists in /etc/inet.d before running update-rc.d
bashism in printf

0.82-2