On Mon, 20.12.10 16:51, Miklos Vajna (vmik...@frugalware.org) wrote: > Hi, > > We got some report[1] recently that not everyone is happy with the > current lack of fsck output during the boot process. > > As far as I understand there are two conflicting requirement: > > 1. Execute fsck processes in parallel, as in case the disks are in > different buses then this causes massive startup speedup. > > 2. Provide some feedback to a user on bootup on what happens > (progressbar), otherwise she will think the machine just hangs. > > Right now 1) is implemented in systemd and I understand that in case > multiple fsck processes are running in parallel, there is no easy way to > output a progressbar, as the result will be just a mess on the tty. > > OTOH many users have a simple system with a single root partition, and > from their PoV a progressbar would not cause any slowdown. I crated a > proof-of-concept patch[2] to demonstrate what I'm talking about. > > I'm aware that while this patch solves 2), it probably causes a slowdown > in 1). > > So my question: Do you have an idea how could we handle the situation of > those single-partition users? Or is the slowdown introduced by the patch > considered minimal and it could be included?
Hmm, I am kinda keen on keeping the fsck output also in syslog, hence just switching the output from syslog to tty is not ideal. Maybe we should add a mechanism so that we can output things to syslog and console at the same time. (i added this now to the todo list) I don't think the slow-down is a real problem, so I would simply ignore it, in particular if the output goes via a socket buffer which is gigantic for these uses anyway. The fsck man page says if -C is used fsck will ensure that only a single fsck outputs things at the same time. I wonder if that only works if fsck -A is used or also when we start multiple instances manually and individually. Another option could be to use -C <fd> to direct the normal output of fsck to syslog, but the progress bar to the console. I guess the combination of -C <fd> to direct the progress bar to the console plus StandardOutput=syslog+console would be pretty good. the progress bar makes no sense in the logs anyway. I have now added two things to the todo list: - introduce StandardOutput=syslog+console - hack systemd-fsck to support -C with a console fd With both in place we should have a good solution. If somebody wants to work on this, this would be welcomed very much. (In a Plymouth world we probably want to forward progress information to plymouth in some way, not sure how to do this best however.) Lennart -- Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc. _______________________________________________ systemd-devel mailing list systemd-devel@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
