Re: bin/60607: /etc/rc does too much throw-away work and is needlessly slow on constrained systems

[Jason Thorpe <thorpej%me.com@localhost>]

> On Aug 17, 2026, at 6:42 AM, Jason Thorpe <thorpej%me.com@localhost> wrote:
> 
> The cache can’t live on /var because /var might not be available when the cache is required (this would especially be the case for read-only roots).  The only path that’s currently guaranteed to be available when /etc/rc starts processing the rc.d scripts is /etc.  It’s pretty straightforward to suppress any error messages that might occur when writing out the cache (which happens as the last step of the boot process).  And, yes, I can refactor the code that builds and writes out the cache into rc.subr so that there can be a “nostart” rc.d script to rebuild it for those who wish to do that before the next reboot.

Updated patch: https://www.netbsd.org/~thorpej/rcorder-cache-diff-v2.txt

Also ran it on my AlphaStation 200 4/233.  Even with a few heavy hitters in the boot of that machine (ntpd wiring itself, sshd, fontconfig cache, IPv6 DAD, etc.) that consume most of the time, it still managed to save 20 seconds, reducing “date-to-date” boot time from 2min 20sec to 2min flat.

-- thorpej