[145] in DCNS Development
Some VS2000 X login session timings
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (roden@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Tue Nov 26 12:45:09 1991
From: roden@Athena.MIT.EDU
To: developers@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 12:43:04 EST
Thanks to Craig...
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From: cfields@Athena.MIT.EDU
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To: dcns-sysdev@Athena.MIT.EDU, athena-ws@Athena.MIT.EDU
Subject: Some VS2000 X login session timings
Here are some rough numbers pertaining to login times on VS2000
workstations, intended to give a clue as to what takes time during a
login. Most of these numbers were obtained by running special versions
of xlogin, xsession, and console. The exceptions, time to prompt, mwm,
dash, and xterm, were obtained with a stopwatch. This time is measured
from when return is pressed for the password until the athena% prompt
arrives.
VS2000 Login Timing Samples
(1) (2) (3) (4)
xlogin password to exec: 17.5 22.2 27.1 18.3
xlogin exec to .xsession**: 6.0 9.4 10.4 6
compute sleep time: 4.0 3.9 3.5 4
run xsession's .cshrc 7.0 4.7 7.3 6
Typical startup times:
mwm . . 25 . .
dash . . 12 . .
xterm . . 17 . .
Total time to prompt: - 1:45 2:00 2:06
Time of weekday: - 11:50a 12:00p 12:15p
Xlogin breakdown:
hesiod lookup (passwd): 0.5 4.3 4.2 0.6
tickets: 2.3 1.2 1.2 1.8
encrypt, etc.: 1.4 1.2 1.5 1.6
attach: 7.7 11.1 13.2 9.3
add to password file: 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.4
fork for quota: 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.5
print /etc/motd: 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.2
hesiod lookup (group): 0.1 0.2 4.1 0.3
add_to_group: 1.2 0.8 0.6 1.0
add to utmp: 2.8 1.4 0.8 2.1
chdir to home: 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.0
Sum: 17.1 21.7 26.8 17.8
random inits: 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.5
Total: 17.5 22.2 27.1 18.3
(1) burn (w/afs packs)
(2) w20-575-50
(3) m11-116-11
(4) m66-080-20 (w/spinning edsc)
** includes the running of /etc/athena/login/Xsession
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Comments:
Login times (as measured from password entry to csh prompt) vary from
80 to 120 seconds, making login take about 20% of the process. Time
in xlogin might be cut significantly by parallelizing the call to
attach.
The startup time for xterm includes time to get a prompt, so csh
startup is a significant part of that number.
dash and mwm are started before xterm. Starting xterm first would
get you a prompt thirty to fifty seconds sooner.
I have always thought of time to a prompt as the metric of startup
time. I'm not really sure what metric ought to be used.
I hope to get many more, and much better numbers soon.
Craig
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