[systemd-devel] systemd-vconsole-setup fails very slowly

[Kay Sievers]

On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 8:56 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto at amacapital.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 6:29 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto at amacapital.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 6:13 PM, Lennart Poettering
>> <lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
>>> On Wed, 21.01.15 19:15, Andy Lutomirski (luto at amacapital.net) wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all-
>>>>
>>>> When running virtme (a simple vm gadget) on Fedora 21, the slowest
>>>> part of bootup by far appears to be systemd-vconsole-setup:
>>>>
>>>> # time /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-vconsole-setup
>>>> putfont: PIO_FONT trying ...
>>>> ...................
>>>> setfont: putfont: 512,8x16:  failed: -1
>>>> putfont: PIO_FONT: Invalid argument
>>>> /usr/bin/setfont failed with error code 71.
>>>
>>> setfont is not part of systemd, we just invoke it. If that fails, this
>>> is a problem somewhere between the VM, the kernel and console-tools.
>>>
>>
>> Aha -- I missed that systemd-vconsole-setup calls setfont.  I can
>> trigger the same problem by just typing setfont.  For whatever reason,
>> my other Fedora 21 computer only has this problem if I type setfont
>> and not if I run systemd-vconcole-setup.
>>
>>> My uneducated guess is that your virtual machine boots up with a
>>> non-graphical console, and the tool thus tries to upload the fonts
>>> into the good old VGA hw text mode glyph tables, and qemu is very slow
>>> at that... Or something like that.
>>
>> setfont is doing this:
>>
>> nanosleep({0, 250000000}, NULL)         = 0
>> ioctl(3, PIO_FONT, 0xfbc010)            = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
>> write(2, ".", 1.)                        = 1
>> nanosleep({0, 250000000}, NULL)         = 0
>> ioctl(3, PIO_FONT, 0xfbc010)            = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
>> write(2, ".", 1.)                        = 1
>> nanosleep({0, 250000000}, NULL)         = 0
>> ioctl(3, PIO_FONT, 0xfbc010)            = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
>> write(2, ".", 1.)                        = 1
>> nanosleep({0, 250000000}, NULL)         = 0
>> ioctl(3, PIO_FONT, 0xfbc010)            = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
>> write(2, ".", 1.)                        = 1
>> nanosleep({0, 250000000}, NULL)         = 0
>> ioctl(3, PIO_FONT, 0xfbc010)            = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
>> write(2, ".", 1.)                        = 1
>>
>> This thing has only a serial console:
>>
>> # cat /proc/consoles
>> ttyS0                -W- (EC   a)    4:64
>>
>> setfont does this:
>>
>>         /* we allow ourselves to hang here for ca 5 seconds, xdm may
>> be playing tricks on us. */
>>         while ((loop++ < 20) && (i = ioctl(fd, PIO_FONT, buf)))
>>           {
>>             if (loop <= 1)
>>               fprintf(stderr, "putfont: PIO_FONT trying ...\n");
>>             else
>>               fprintf(stderr, ".");
>>             usleep(250000);
>>           }
>>         fprintf(stderr, "\n");
>>
>> Alexey, would it make sense to remove this loop or to add a way to turn it off?
>
> Ping, everyone?
>
> This issue still exists.  AFAICT systemd is relying on a really old
> tool, that that really old tool (setfont) is sometimes delaying boot
> by a very large amount.  Can we either fix the tool (Alexey) or stop
> using it (systemd people)?

Hmm, why is the "vm gadget" you run configuring a custom console font
at all? If there is no custom font specified in t he config, systemd
will not run setfont.

Or did you mean to have vconsole-setup detect that it should not even
try to run setfont? Not sure how to find that out.

I don't really see how vconsole-setup could get rid of calling setfont
from systemd, it is needed in many setups.

Kay