From fa2ecbf12390890ccce557d419a629db3012a2dd Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Petter Reinholdtsen Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2016 14:47:52 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] New post about eatmydata. --- blog/data/2016-11-25-d-i-eatmydata.txt | 43 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 43 insertions(+) create mode 100644 blog/data/2016-11-25-d-i-eatmydata.txt diff --git a/blog/data/2016-11-25-d-i-eatmydata.txt b/blog/data/2016-11-25-d-i-eatmydata.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..9c2802cb8b --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/data/2016-11-25-d-i-eatmydata.txt @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +Title: Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata +Tags: english, debian, debian edu +Date: 2016-11-25 14:50 + +

Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian +installer, observing how using +eatmydata +could speed up the installation quite a bit. My testing measured +speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around +1000 packages from within the installer. The eatmydata package is a +way to disable/delay file system flushing. This is a bit risky in the +general case, as files that should be stored on disk will stay only in +memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a machine +crashes at an inconvenient time. But for an installation, if the +machine crashes during installation the process is normally restarted, +and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed up the +process make perfect sense. + +

I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable +eatmydata, +but did not have time to push it any further. But a few months ago I +picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer +Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation +speedup in Debian. Thanks to our cooperation There is now an +eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply +enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the +quicker installations. It can be enabled using preseeding. The +following untested kernel argument should do the trick:

+ +
+preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
+
+ +

This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i +environment early in the installation sequence. Having it installed +in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just +after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian +system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata. This is enough to +speed up the installation process. There is a proposal to +extend the idea a bit further +by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf, but I have not +tested its impact.

+ -- 2.47.2