TEST: fai & libeatmydata

[Julien BLACHE]

Hi,

The length of the deployment process being a recurrent complaint around
here, my colleague and I couldn't resist the idea of using libeatmydata
during the installation with FAI to try and gain some speed.

On our standard-issue workstation with our standard software package
(complete GNOME + KDE + a selection of scientific packages) [1], using
libeatmydata for the instsoft task led to a 50% reduction of the
deployment time.

We went from 45 minutes down to somewhere around 22-25 minutes.

This was done by adding libeatmydata to LD_PRELOAD in the instsoft hook
and removing it again from LD_PRELOAD after instsoft is
done. libeatmydata must be installed in the target system beforehand and
is not needed in the nfsroot. Setting LD_PRELOAD earlier on and leaving
it set after the instsoft task led to issues with partitioning and some
scripts.

As far as I'm concerned, this result brings FAI installations back up to
the speed I was used to years ago. We wanted to share this, and maybe
this could become an option in FAI 4.x? Depending on how dpkg evolves in
this regard, of course (I hear there are talks of making it a config
option, something FAI could also use).

JB.

[1] Environment details:
 - 2x E5520 2.26 GHz quad-core CPUs
 - 2x 500 GB SATA disks in a software RAID1 setup
 - 12 GB RAM
 - software package is 3-4 GB worth of .debs

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 Julien BLACHE - Debian & GNU/Linux Developer - <jblache at debian.org> 
 
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