Slow boot time with Nvidia Drivers

[SPAstef]

Hi, I have a Optimus laptop with Nvidia drivers. When I start the PC without them, it usually takes just a couple seconds to boot, but when I enable them, it takes about 3 minutes. Now, having tried some things, I noticed that this tends to happen only after the 2nd reboot after the installation. I don't know how to gather more logs about this, but I've got "good" knowledge of Linux so if you tell me how, I can give you all the necessary extra informations. This issue persists basically since... I would say September 2019

[thiagomacieira]

You can try to get information using systemd-analyze:

# systemd-analyze critical-chain
The time when unit became active or started is printed after the "@" character.
The time the unit took to start is printed after the "+" character.

graphical.target @3.334s
└─multi-user.target @3.334s
  └─machines.target @3.334s
    └─systemd-nspawn@tjmaciei-ctnr.service @2.941s +392ms
      └─network.target @2.939s
        └─systemd-resolved.service @2.733s +205ms
          └─systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service @2.716s +16ms
            └─local-fs.target @2.715s
              └─var-lib-machines-dovecot.mount @2.711s +3ms
                └─var-lib-machines.mount @2.624s +85ms
                  └─dev-mapper-vg0\x2dstuff.device @2.623s
# systemd-analyze blame
2.213s systemd-cryptsetup@cr_sda4.service  
1.225s setup-proxy.service                 
 392ms systemd-nspawn@tjmaciei-ctnr.service
 381ms systemd-nspawn@dovecot.service      
 371ms systemd-logind.service              
 313ms swupd-update.service                
 206ms systemd-udevd.service               
 205ms systemd-resolved.service            
 203ms systemd-networkd.service            
 200ms fstrim.service                      
 191ms systemd-machined.service            
 184ms systemd-journald.service            
[...]

[SPAstef]

Ok, I'm attaching 2 files. First one, is the result of systemd-analyze time, the second one is what I actually see by using a chronometer. It's interesting to note that there are 2 "laps" I marked: during boot, I can see the caret blinking and some info appearing on the top left. After the caret stops blinking (first lap, ~15 sec. mark, roughly the same time reported by systemd...), I am able to access tty with CTRL+F2, BUT the graphical environment is still completely black (just like it is frozen, crashed or is somehow trying to fallback to another engine, just some guesses) for other ~1:40 minutes (second lap).

stefano@MSICL~ $ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 15.739s (firmware) + 173ms (loader) + 705ms (kernel) + 1.444s (userspace) = 18.063s 
graphical.target reached after 1.384s in userspace
stefano@MSICL~ $

[ahkok]

please post the output of systemd-analyze blame output. the time isn't very useful, it has no resolution.

Unfortunately a real life stopwatch is useless info. Sorry. A video would be a better source of information.

[SPAstef]

Ok, I have been able to solve this problem, and I think the solution might be of interest to all others with an Optimus laptop, since I've not seen this in any Clear Linux thread/issue:
by default, GDM tries to load up with Wayland. This will cause it to fail miserably and crash, causing a really long freeze/restart I guess (it probably tries a few times before giving up, IDK). In short, the solution is to create the file /etc/gdm/custom.conf, and appending the lines:

[daemon]
WaylandEnable=false

This has solved it after several reboots, and also seems to have stopped another issue I had, which is being unable to shut down the computer without cutting the power off (my pc would just get stuck on a black screen instead of turning off). Thanks @ahkok for the tips, didn't know about that command 👍

[ahkok]

Cool, - yes, I wonder if gdm shouldn't just default to X11 if it detects NVIDIA drivers...

Thanks for reporting back in!