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

[Andy Lutomirski]

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)?

--Andy