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Rock64 boot time - eMMC vs SD vs SSD


MadMax

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I'm building a portable battery powered NAS because syncing and having everything multiple times on all my Android devices sucks.

 

I took my old Banana Pi connected a SSD to the SATA port and made it a access point (no Samba yet installed).

Booting from the 16GB SanDisk Ultra A1 is 27 seconds.

Moving everything to the SSD in armbian config is also 27 seconds (no difference?)

 

I know the Banana has not the fastest SATA and NIC and that USB 3 on the Rock64 is faster.

But i don't copy tons of gigabyte to the device everyday and for streaming over the WiFi stick it's fast enough.

 

I'm interested on the boot time of the Rock64 (eMMC or USB/SSD).

If its not much faster then i see no reason to by a Rock64 for that.

Also the Banana has the advantage that you can solder a battery to it.

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49 minutes ago, MadMax said:

Also the Banana has the advantage that you can solder a battery to it

 

Useless since BPi people 'forgot' to think also about powering a SATA disk when running on battery. You need an Olimex Lime or better Lime2 for this.

 

Here is a table of our boards containing also 'armbianmonitor -u' output where you can see average boot times: https://github.com/armbian/testings/blob/master/table.md -- you need to provide 'armbianmonitor -u' output too of course if you want other opinions on why your booting takes too long.

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33 minutes ago, MadMax said:

So why not just using a 5V Step-Up regulator?


Lime has it build on the board, on Banana you have to make one.

 

33 minutes ago, MadMax said:

I don't see how armbianmonitor is telling me the boot time.


We do.

Providing support is usually possible only if we see logs and "armbianmonitor -u" is a collection of them. If you keep them for yourself don't expect any help or hints.


http://ix.io/1kQc 16s

http://ix.io/1lhu 7s

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It's cheaper to buy a 4€ Pololu Step-Up regulator than a 60€ Lime.

 

You do but i want to see it also :-)

 

Here is mine: http://ix.io/1mVc

 

Question was more if eMMC is much faster than a A1 SD and not why mine is so slow.

Because i did not think until now it is slow - is it? I have no comparison to eMMC and my RPi's and the Odroid O2 are not faster then the BPi...

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10 minutes ago, MadMax said:

Question was more if eMMC is much faster than a A1 SD and not why mine is so slow.


Since I don't have the exact data for eMMC that is found on Lime (check here if there are any tests https://forum.armbian.com/topic/954-sd-card-performance/) I can't tell. Generally speaking, eMMC is way faster in small files and little faster in sequential r/w operations. And it's more reliable than SD cards.

 

13 minutes ago, MadMax said:

Because i did not think until now it is slow - is it?


It's normal speed. You can compare your results to https://github.com/armbian/testings/blob/master/table.md. The fastest SD card used in those tests is A1 Samsung 32G. 

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I still don't know where i see the boot time in armbianmonitor.

Where do you see that A1 Samsung?

 

I was using a stopwatch from plugin until i saw the login and that was 27 seconds.

I thought booting from the SSD makes a big difference because of I/O but there is no difference to the micro SD.

Is the CPU or the SATA on the BPi a bottleneck when it comes to booting?

 

Also just found out that "systemd-analyze blame" command:

~# systemd-analyze blame
          9.024s networking.service
          4.245s armbian-hardware-monitor.service
          3.272s dev-sda1.device
          3.151s systemd-rfkill.service
          2.406s dev-zram1.device
          2.268s dev-zram2.device
          2.210s dnsmasq.service
          1.692s systemd-udev-trigger.service
          1.588s armbian-ramlog.service
          1.577s hostapd.service
          1.497s keyboard-setup.service
          1.285s armbian-zram-config.service
          1.224s loadcpufreq.service
          1.016s ntp.service
           883ms systemd-journald.service
           845ms ssh.service
           824ms systemd-logind.service
           623ms rc-local.service
           612ms rsyslog.service
           605ms sysstat.service
           582ms user@0.service
           427ms systemd-fsck@dev-disk-by\x2duuid-e727db0f\x2dc49e\x2d438d\x2dbc29\x2deedf14228e88.service
           370ms systemd-modules-load.service
           328ms resolvconf.service
           325ms systemd-user-sessions.service
           312ms systemd-update-utmp.service
           289ms kmod-static-nodes.service
           280ms cpufrequtils.service
           272ms fake-hwclock.service
           271ms alsa-restore.service
           258ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
           251ms sysfsutils.service
           230ms systemd-udevd.service
           227ms systemd-journal-flush.service
           220ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
           218ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
           184ms systemd-sysctl.service
           180ms systemd-remount-fs.service
           178ms media-mmcboot.mount
           162ms dev-mqueue.mount
           144ms sys-kernel-config.mount
           136ms systemd-random-seed.service
           117ms console-setup.service
            96ms armbian-hardware-optimize.service
            72ms systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service
            66ms boot.mount
            52ms tmp.mount

 

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4 minutes ago, MadMax said:

I still don't know where i see the boot time in armbianmonitor.

 

Type dmesg and you will see times in front of boot log entries.  Not the most proper way but you see if something is wrong right away.

 

7 minutes ago, MadMax said:

I was using a stopwatch from plugin until i saw the login and that was 27 seconds.


This is better. There is a delay in u-boot as well, especially if you have some USB devices which are scanned, there is some boot delay by a purpose that you can break booting and get into u-boot prompt.
 

9 minutes ago, MadMax said:

Is the CPU or the SATA on the BPi a bottleneck when it comes to booting?

 

CPU.

 

5 minutes ago, MadMax said:

Where do you see that A1 Samsung?


You mean in the log?

### mmc0:59b4 info:

                 cid: 1b534d303030303010915c060100fa93 
                 csd: 400e00325b590000775d7f800a4000a3 
                 scr: 0235800300000000 
                date: 10/2015 
                name: 00000 
                type: SD 
preferred_erase_size: 4194304 
               fwrev: 0x0 
               hwrev: 0x1 
               oemid: 0x534d 
              manfid: 0x00001b 
              serial: 0x915c0601 
              uevent: DRIVER=mmcblk MMC_TYPE=SD MMC_NAME=00000 MODALIAS=mmc:block 
          erase_size: 512 

 

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51 minutes ago, MadMax said:

Question was more if eMMC is much faster than a A1 SD and not why mine is so slow

 

These are two different questions.

  1. The media makes no difference whatsoever if it's about booting times, even most crappy SD cards perform the same: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/4167-f2fs-revisited/?do=findComment&comment=30835
  2. If you for whatever reasons need short boot times Armbian is not for you. We optimize constantly but never for short boot times but for better operation once the board has finished booting

If you need short boot times you need to become an expert to learn how to eliminate the various bottlenecks (see https://forum.armbian.com/topic/1089-usbootpi/ for example)

 

 

If you're interested in times relevant for your use case you need to measure the time until the respective service is usable (and not until a login prompt appears somewhere).

 

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33 minutes ago, tkaiser said:
  1. The media makes no difference whatsoever if it's about booting times, even most crappy SD cards perform the same.

 

That was the answer to my question in the first place. Funny that there is no difference.

So no reason for me to buy another board and let the BPi spoil in the drawer.

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38 minutes ago, MadMax said:

That was the answer to my question in the first place

 

Well, don't think so. You asked another entirely different question:

5 hours ago, MadMax said:

I'm interested on the boot time of the Rock64 (eMMC or USB/SSD).

 

And... Rock64 will boot way faster than your outdated Banana Pi regardless of the boot media. But as already said: if you're interested in a specific use case IMO you should look also at this use case. Stop watch waiting for login prompt is pretty much irrelevant for 'wireless NAS being ready to serve'

 

Check your own armbianmonitor -u output for 'link becomes ready' occurrences then you know how much time it already takes since the kernel has started for the wireless link to come up. I've seen quite some delays with some USB wireless dongles in the past so this is something at least I would take care of.

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It's not that I'm fighting for seconds.

It was more curiosity.

If i can use this thing after ~30 seconds everything is OK.

My TV or satellite receiver are slower :D

 

I will buy a Rock64 next month for another use case (surveillance cam display h265) and then i will see how the boot time is there.

And if there is no difference in boot time between SD and eMMC i now know i don't need a eMMC there.

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4 hours ago, chwe said:

the table you mentioned would be happy to see some reports for the Lime2

 

My Limes are productive and of course I froze Armbian updates. The 'boards bricked by Armbian updates for no reason' shit show from earlier this year was an important lesson...

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