Solved Resourses to troubleshoot the DE

[bob466]

This may be of help...
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/speed-mint.html#ID6

 

[Danbor]

As I understand the problem, the time for Cinnamon to load is the problem, not the booting up to the point where the display manager login prompt appears where you enter your password.

If that is the case, the systemd-analyze blame is not able to help you because it is a measure of the time taken to get to the graphical-user.target, not beyond that point. So, in other words, it provides times for the booting of the systemd-units to get the system to the point where you can login. It doesn't measure your user session startup after login that brings up the Cinnamon Desktop Environment.

If you look at the whole output of the systemd-analyze blame command you're likely to find that it only starts the systemd-logind.service, but nothing further which may be related to Cinnamon.

It may be reasonable thus, to look at everything that Cinnamon starts to see if there's a time sapping app in there somewhere. Not running Cinnamon here, I can't say anything useful about that at the moment.

Edit: accessing my notes I notice that there is another command which may or may not be useful:

systemd-analyze --user blame

This command will measure systemd units started by the user. It's worth checking the output of this command to see if it has excessive times for the user's units' startups, but it still may not be that useful in relation to Cinnamon because a desktop like Cinnamon just starts up heaps of apps.

That was my assumption too Osprey. There's no problem with the boot sequence, the problem is with the DE loading sequence. I can find a lot of threads and troubleshooting "flowcharts" for booting, but, so far, I've not found anything that troubleshoots the desktop environment loading process.
I've already tried restoring from my oldest snapshot, but the issue, whatever it is, was apparently there already.

 

[osprey]

That was my assumption too Osprey. There's no problem with the boot sequence, the problem is with the DE loading sequence. I can find a lot of threads and troubleshooting "flowcharts" for booting, but, so far, I've not found anything that troubleshoots the desktop environment loading process.
I've already tried restoring from my oldest snapshot, but the issue, whatever it is, was apparently there already.

It may be useful to have a look at the apps that start up automatically with Cinnamon and look to seeing which ones may be taking some time to start. One can check that by excluding apps that look like time-consuming candidates. There's a webpage that describes the management of start-ups in linux mint here: https://winaero.com/manage-startup-apps-linux-mint/.

Another approach is to see which systemd services are started by the user which are currently in memory. They can be seen in the output of the command:

systemctl --user list-units

If there are services there that can be dispensed with, that may help with the speed issue. They can be disabled or masked so they don't start when the user logs in.

 

[Danbor]

I've managed to find both the lightdm.log and the xserver log. As I understand it, these files pertain to the cinnamon DE. To my untrained eye, both appear to list problems. But since I can't interpret them, I can't be sure. Both files are near 400 lines long, though much of it looks duplicated.
If anyone wants to have look at them, I can attach txt files. Or however it should be done.

 

[Danbor]

It may be useful to have a look at the apps that start up automatically with Cinnamon and look to seeing which ones may be taking some time to start. One can check that by excluding apps that look like time-consuming candidates. There's a webpage that describes the management of start-ups in linux mint here: https://winaero.com/manage-startup-apps-linux-mint/.

Another approach is to see which systemd services are started by the user which are currently in memory. They can be seen in the output of the command:

systemctl --user list-units

If there are services there that can be dispensed with, that may help with the speed issue. They can be disabled or masked so they don't start when the user logs in.

Thanks for the tip. Checked out the article. Startup applications listed from preferences are -
Blueman Applet
HP System Tray Service
KeePassXC
Print Queue Applet
SSH Key Agent
System Reports
Update manager
xapp-sn-watcher
All have been there for at least a year. Except the Blueman applet. I'll experiment with that in a bit.
As far as systemctl --user-list units, all have been there since OS install, except, again, the bluetooth device.
I'll disable bluetooth and reboot again. Back in a bit

 

[Danbor]

The bluetooth application is not the problem.
At least it's not a mission critical issue, just an annoyance. But does provide a learning opportunity!
Off to do more research!

 

[Danbor]

Finally figured it out. The problem was caused by Nord VPN.
I wiped the SSD, repartitioned, and reinstalled The OS. Then started installing things one at a time, rebooting after each.
Not sure what happened when I installed Nord, the long boot time was back.
Then I uninstalled / purged Nord. Rebooted, re installed Nord yet again, and the boot time is a mere seconds.
I'll be months getting everything tweaked to my satisfaction. On the plus side though. I was able to install a newer version of Gimp. I was using an Appimage version before. Also updated to the newest Virtualbox.