Making Mandrake Fast(er)

[Guest davebsr]

I've been told that Mandrake is impossible to use on old hardware, it's simply too big. I've also been told that it has a lot of bloat. Well...I've done a couple of things to speed it up abit.

 

First off, compile your own kernel and check your modules - (lsmod) make sure you aren't running any extra stuff at the kernel level that would slow you down. Dolson has a nice tutorial about compiling on his site.

 

A second thing to do, turn off all the services you have going that aren't needed. I run a server - no sound card. But sound and alsa are enabled under MCC->system->Services. so I turn them off. You really don't need APMD if you don't have a battery system. or chargen, or cups, or cvs, or keytable...

 

Know what is running and why, if you can. Under services, I only run:

atd - run stuff at a certain time

crond - run stuff at a certain time repeatedly

internet - the internet, right?

iptables - for my firewall

kheader - What is this good for?

alsa/alsasound - sound

network - network

numlock - make numlock work right I guess?

partmon - monitor partitions

syslog - log files

shorewall - a firewall

sshd - remote connection

random - random number generator

xfs - for X when I need it

xinetd - not sure I need this either, it's network stuff.

 

So I have cut out a lot of servers, and made my system faster. I also run icewm instead of KDE or gnome, it just makes me happier. Add more suggestions and hints on how to tweak! If i've turned off anything important, you might want to let me know that too (so far it's very stable though).

[DOlson]

I got the boot time on one computer down from 65 seconds to 25 seconds, including the video BIOS and system POST routines.

 

If I time it from the grub loader to login, it takes less than 12 seconds.

[MottS]

Here is some stuff that is turned on on your machine but is turned off on mine (and my system run smootly too).. so ..

 

atd

syslog (it fills your /var/log of reports about kernel and other things. If your system is ok then turn it off)

sshd (If you are not a server you don't need that)

ramdom (It is to generate cryptographic keys.. do you? This is turned off on my machine)

numlock (It is turned off on my machine. I can do it by hand)

partmon ("check if a partition if close to full up" .. since when we need that?)

alsa/alsasound (I have another option called 'sound' which is turned on so this one is off)

 

I could be wrong here so if anyone consider that I should turn a service on then just say it.

 

MottS

[DOlson]

Here is some stuff that is turned on on your machine but is turned off on mine (and my system run smootly too).. so ..

 

atd

syslog (it fills your /var/log of reports about kernel and other things.  If your system is ok then turn it off)

sshd (If you are not a server you don't need that)

ramdom (It is to generate cryptographic keys.. do you? This is turned off on my machine)

numlock (It is turned off on my machine. I can do it by hand)

partmon  ("check if a partition if close to full up" .. since when we need that?)

alsa/alsasound (I have another option called 'sound' which is turned on so this one is off)

 

I could be wrong here so if anyone consider that I should turn a service on then just say it.

 

MottS

 

sshd is useful if you want to access your system from another system on a LAN or over the Internet. I often help people via SSH (if they have it installed) and request it.

 

partmon is sorta useless as it is, but you don't get warnings about drive space using any programs that I am aware of... So I wrote a script that I run in cron every few minutes and pops up a dialog if I'm under a certain amount of space. The reason being that some desktops will crash, and in the case of dfm, your icons will go nuts, if you have no free space left.

[qeldroma]

Some things out of my boxes:

-kheader is for regenerating kernelheaders, if you install something new, that needs changes there. Ex.: VMWare.

-partmon: I had a server crash cause of a full /var-partition, no warning, service was up. Shall i tell more?

-Xinetd. Mostly you don't need it. Nice is fam, that works only with Xinetd. But without fam, all will work, perhaps some konqueror things will be little bit more slow.

-If you use ssh, you'll perhaps need random, because of the keygeneration, like MottS told. Will work without, too, but the keys are perhaps a little bit less secure.

- NumLock: Well, it's executed, than it's idle and does not affect your system. I don't switch it off, has no effect to performance.

-devfsd: If possible: off. Some usb or printers need it. Additional you'll have to switch iot off in the bootoption "nomount=devfs".

 

Some else?

[Guest anon]

Complete list of system services:

http://www.kernow.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/adm.../aservice2.html

[theYinYeti]

You can run all the services you want, but still reduce boot time. Look here:

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?p=5202#5202

 

Yves.

[gregor]

I also...

 

Disable netscape plugin scanning at KDE startup in:

/usr/bin/startkde

#if [ -x /usr/bin/nspluginscan ]; then

# /usr/bin/nspluginscan

#fi

 

Disable dynamic desktop

Comment out all lines in:

/etc/devfs/conf.d

 

Comment out some sleep commands in

vim /etc/rc.sysinit

# sleep 1

 

Recompile kernel:

urpmi kernel-source

cd /usr/src/linux

make mrproper

cp arch/i386/defconfig .config

make xconfig

(select Procesor type...)

make dep && make clean && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install && make install

add compact to /etc/lilo.conf

lilo