Graph the system bootup performance

If you’ve followed Tip 8, on page 66, which described how to optimize
Ubuntu’s boot-up, you might also be interested in Bootchart. As its
name suggests, this creates charts displaying exactly what starts dur-
ing boot-up, and the time it takes. Once installed by Synaptic (search
for the bootchart package), it runs as a background service and no con-
figuration is necessary. After each boot you’ll find the chart it has gen-
erated in the /var/log/bootchart/ directory—to view it, just precede its
filename at the command-line with eog or browse to it using Nautilus
and double-click it.
The chart shows the total time taken to boot along the vertical axis,
and beneath this shows the time taken by each of the startup services
to complete. See Figure 3.3, on the following page for an example taken
from my test computer.
Remember that programs such as Bootchart that log boot-up speeds
can themselves impact performance. When you’ve finished with it, be
sure to use Synaptic to remove the package.

Taken from Ubuntu Kungfu