Post your MD Boottimes

[bongowongo]

Just curious how fast a / your MD boots.

In virtualbox my MD netboots in 4:00 minutes from bios to usability.
I want to see if it makes difference booting from Harddisk or Net.

And 4:00 seems quite long to see my favorite show "Squarebob Spongepants".

Also has Beta / debugging code a big influence on these boottimes?

[nosilla99]

My Core is running under VMWare Esxi 4, 1GB RAM and 1 processor core allocated

Media Director #1
Asus M3N78-VM
AMD II x2 245
2GB RAM
HD-DVD/Blu Ray RW
Denon AVR2805
UI2 - Alpha Bending
Connected via 100Mb network

boots in 2 mins 10 seconds

I have listed spec of md and basic details of core and network as this will have an impact on boot time, I have also listed connected devices under LinuxMCE control as also impacts boot speed.
 
I will add my other MD's to this list later

NOS

[jamo]

I'm surprised this thread has not seen much activity- have searched but perhaps missed something.

I'm still in the early stages of setup and I repeat rule #1 every morning ;-)

My only MD at the moment is my work notebook - an HP6710b.
CPU: Intel Core™2 Duo Processor T7500 @ 2.2Ghz
RAM: 2Gb

Before I broke it (turning on bluetooth from admin website?), I timed it at

netbooting in 500s - 8min20s. Very slow.

I don't know if the speed is to do with the fact that it may still have been setting up/installing a few things or if it is just the slow network - 10/100 hub as the bottleneck. When It's stabilised, I'll try plugging it directly into the core NIC2 with a cross-over cable to test the difference before I splash out on my Gig switch.

I would think netboot times would be of interest- do most people leave most of their MDs on all the time or do they start them as required? I guess if it's around 2min it's ok - but at 8+ min that baby had better be left running!

[toppot]

I'm surprised this thread has not seen much activity- have searched but perhaps missed something.

I'm still in the early stages of setup and I repeat rule #1 every morning ;-)

My only MD at the moment is my work notebook - an HP6710b.
CPU: Intel Core™2 Duo Processor T7500 @ 2.2Ghz
RAM: 2Gb

Before I broke it (turning on bluetooth from admin website?), I timed it at

netbooting in 500s - 8min20s. Very slow.

I don't know if the speed is to do with the fact that it may still have been setting up/installing a few things or if it is just the slow network - 10/100 hub as the bottleneck. When It's stabilised, I'll try plugging it directly into the core NIC2 with a cross-over cable to test the difference before I splash out on my Gig switch.

I would think netboot times would be of interest- do most people leave most of their MDs on all the time or do they start them as required? I guess if it's around 2min it's ok - but at 8+ min that baby had better be left running!

I tend to leave mine on.. You should see great improvements in boot times when switching to your new infrastructure. Actually since you are using a hub you have something comparable to WiFi 54Mbit... And even an upgrade to 100 Mbits switched network should yield quite some improvements - and with the relatively fast processor on your current MD Gbit network would also improve things.

Mine is an Atom MD - thus booting is quite slow!
The upside is, that even when blocking the vents in its small case it gets REALLY hot, but runs very stable (probably with decreased life span), even with full load for hours - so I can turn down the fans to minimum when idling..

BUT: I would really prefer that "Suspend to RAM" got way better implemented! I never got mine to work doing S3 - this is under 8.10, and I am switching to 10.04 very soon (2 weeks time, since I get a new server)..
Can anybody with 10.04 experience inform if S3 is working now??

Personally I do not find 2 min. booting to be OK. Something on the 20+ sec. is what I can live with, that equals the time for the projector (I don't own a TV) to get to full brightness.

-Tony

[Aviator]

You can just put them to sleep. Go into Media Director in the admin page, set the PowerOff mode to S instead of H.  My P4 MD wakes up in 10 seconds.

[jamo]

You can just put them to sleep. Go into Media Director in the admin page, set the PowerOff mode to S instead of H.  My P4 MD wakes up in 10 seconds.

Good to know, Aviator. Once my system is stable  I will try that to speed things up and see if I can get an idea of the comparative power consumption... presumably, even asleep, they draw some juice.

I'm going to borrow a cross-over cable from work today and time my MD boottimes via the network (with the hound-dog-slow hub) and direct nic to nic connection to see just how much of an impact the network speed is having.... should be interesting and if it comes out dramatic will light a fire under me to order the gig switch.

[toppot]

You can just put them to sleep. Go into Media Director in the admin page, set the PowerOff mode to S instead of H.  My P4 MD wakes up in 10 seconds.

Good to know, Aviator. Once my system is stable   I will try that to speed things up and see if I can get an idea of the comparative power consumption... presumably, even asleep, they draw some juice.

Juice in "Suspend-to-RAM" is perhaps a bit over the top.. It should not use much... But please be warned - this is not something that is known to "just work"...

I'm going to borrow a cross-over cable from work today and time my MD boottimes via the network (with the hound-dog-slow hub) and direct nic to nic connection to see just how much of an impact the network speed is having.... should be interesting and if it comes out dramatic will light a fire under me to order the gig switch.

Really looking forward to this one  
(I would guess around 150 secs but could be surprised... Would think the limiting factor could be the rotation speed of your core HDD, which would never be a problem for recording/streaming large media files)

-Tony

[Murdock]

In response to the original question in the topic:

1004 setup w/ Gb network:
POST - 5 seconds
Upstart/SysVinit/X to usable - 2 min 5 seconds


Total - 2 min 10 seconds

[Marie.O]

Time to start MD: 0 (it is always running)
Time from pressing play until there is sound: 4sec (Denon amp is being turned on)
Time from pressing play until there is a pic: 30sec (Time for the JVC projector to heat up its Xenon lamp)

[jamo]

Juice in "Suspend-to-RAM" is perhaps a bit over the top.. It should not use much... But please be warned - this is not something that is known to "just work"...

Really looking forward to this one 
(I would guess around 150 secs but could be surprised... Would think the limiting factor could be the rotation speed of your core HDD, which would never be a problem for recording/streaming large media files)

-Tony

Via the 10/100 hub- MD boot timed at 11min 21s! - 681seconds. Crawling.
Via the Cat5e cross-over cable direct to core - 1min 55s - 115seconds. Smoking 

Well, that certainly answers my primary question: Is the network speed a limiting factor. The gig switch will be ordered first thing monday.

[klanmce]

Zotac Atom Board IONITX-F-E
Time: 1 min 50 sec

I recorded time from the initiation of the PXE BOOT; non inclusive of post.