99e05ab555
The current implementation of the 10_linux script implements its menu
items sorting in bash with a quadratic algorithm, calling "sed", "sort",
"head", and "grep" to compare versions between individual lines, which
is annoyingly slow for kernel developers who can easily end up with
50-100 kernels in /boot.
As an example, on a Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz, running:
/usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig > /dev/null
With 44 kernels in /boot, this command takes 10-15 seconds to complete.
After this fix, the same command runs in 5 seconds.
With 116 kernels in /boot, this command takes 40 seconds to complete.
After this fix, the same command runs in 8 seconds.
For reference, the quadratic algorithm here is:
while [ "x$list" != "x" ] ; do <--- outer loop
linux=`version_find_latest $list`
version_find_latest()
for i in "$@" ; do <--- inner loop
version_test_gt()
fork+exec sed
version_test_numeric()
version_sort
fork+exec sort
fork+exec head -n 1
fork+exec grep
list=`echo $list | tr ' ' '\n' | fgrep -vx "$linux" | tr '\n' ' '`
tr
fgrep
tr
So all commands executed under version_test_gt() are executed
O(n^2) times where n is the number of kernel images in /boot.
Here is the improved algorithm proposed:
- Prepare a list with all the relevant information for ordering by a single
sort(1) execution. This is done by renaming ".old" suffixes by " 1" and
by suffixing all other files with " 2", thus making sure the ".old" entries
will follow the non-old entries in reverse-sorted-order.
- Call version_reverse_sort on the list (sort -r -V): A single execution of
sort(1). For instance, GNU coreutils' sort will reverse-sort the list in
O(n*log(n)) with a merge sort.
- Replace the " 1" suffixes by ".old", and remove the " 2" suffixes.
- Iterate on the reverse-sorted list to output each menu entry item.
Therefore, the algorithm proposed has O(n*log(n)) complexity with GNU
coreutils' sort compared to the prior O(n^2) complexity. Moreover, the
constant time required for each list entry is much less because sorting
is done within a single execution of sort(1) rather than requiring
O(n^2) executions of sed(1), sort(1), head(1), and grep(1) in
sub-shells.
Signed-off-by: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Reviewed-by: Robbie Harwood <rharwood@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel Kiper <daniel.kiper@oracle.com>
This is GRUB 2, the second version of the GRand Unified Bootloader. GRUB 2 is rewritten from scratch to make GNU GRUB cleaner, safer, more robust, more powerful, and more portable. See the file NEWS for a description of recent changes to GRUB 2. See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install the GRUB 2 data and program files. See the file MAINTAINERS for information about the GRUB maintainers, etc. If you found a security vulnerability in the GRUB please check the SECURITY file to get more information how to properly report this kind of bugs to the maintainers. Please visit the official web page of GRUB 2, for more information. The URL is <http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.html>. More extensive documentation is available in the Info manual, accessible using 'info grub' after building and installing GRUB 2. There are a number of important user-visible differences from the first version of GRUB, now known as GRUB Legacy. For a summary, please see: info grub Introduction 'Changes from GRUB Legacy'