[Oneiric-Topic] Server Boot

[Pandu Poluan]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 02:25, Sander Smeenk <ssmeenk at freshdot.net> wrote:
> Quoting Clint Byrum (clint at ubuntu.com):
>
>> >  * Plymouth splashscreens (even textbased ones!)
>> With things starting in parallel, plymouth is just a multiplexer that
>> keeps messages and user interaction from running all over eachother.
>> I'm not sure why you'd be against that.
>
> I'd be happy with unsorted lines prefixed with a PID or procname or
> something. It would be like going through maillogs, i'm used to that ;)
>

That would be brilliant! (i.e., prefix each line with PID)

I'm all for that :-)

>> Agreed that some things have been done to the boot that make no sense
>> for servers. You've done a nice job identifying a few of them above.
>
> Yeah. You've nailed my point. "Ubuntu" is geared, or gearing, towards
> Desktop users. I have no beef with that, i love Ubuntu on the desktop.
> My parents love it too. It just works so well.
>
> When i install Ubuntu on a server i keep asking: why?
> Why do we want our server to have backgrounds in GRUB and show
> bootscreens during boot? Why do we want to start processes in parallel?
> With current hardware it takes longer to get through all BIOS POSTs,
> disk-detection, PXE and other ROMs than it takes to boot the OS. ;)
>

Well, all my Ubuntu Servers are virtualized, and thanks to
parallelized startup, 10.04 takes only 10-20 seconds to complete
'shutdown -r now' and go back to operation ;-)

(Virtualization helped greatly in cutting down the
Server-Box-Startup-DooHickery wait -- now I no longer rue the day I
have to restart a server :-D)

So, I *love* the parallelized startup.

But I *despise* the silent startup.

> One solution could be a subset of packages geared to servers?
> Don't know how feasible that is.
>
> Currently it's really only the kernel that makes a server install a
> server install. The packages installed are all the same available on the
> desktop. There's just less pulled in though metapackages at install.
>
>> Keep the ideas coming everybody!
>
> Thanks for sharing your views and insights!
>
> With regards,
> -Sander.


--
Pandu E Poluan
~ IT Optimizer ~
Visit my Blog: http://pepoluan.posterous.com