Trimming down startup

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Trimming down startup
started by: hansaad

Posted by hansaad on May 17 2006,15:56

Hello, I'm amazed at how well my old computer (specs in sig) has taken to DSL. Yet, I want to further speed up boot time, free as much memory as possible, and generally optimize what I can.

A few startup kernel messages that I notice from running dmesg:

Quote

PCI: System does not support PCI

Quote

SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno=2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno=2

Quote

usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.275 $ time 19:48:59 Apr 17 2004
usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled
usb-uhci.c: v1.275:USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
usb.c: deregistering driver usbdevfs
usb.c: deregistering driver hub
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb.c: deregistering driver usbdevfs
usb.c: deregistering driver hub
...
(floppy, cloop)
...
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid
hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers

After logging in, the lsmod command reports the following modules as "unused":
mousdev
hid
input (mousdev and hid depend on it, so I assume it is unused as well)
usbcore
cloop
ide-cd
ide-scsi

This seems correct to me, as I have no mouse, no usb, no cd-rom or scsi (just a floppy). I've used rmmod on the modules in question without error or other consequence. Yet, after every reboot, the same modules are in place again, and I suspect they are also taking up boot time in addition to system resources. I have no future plans to modify the hardware or software on this, other than getting a PCMCIA Network Card (wired).

How do I remove these and keep the changes permanent?
My guess is it involves recompiling the kernel, but I am unsure.

Also, I've commented out a portion of /etc/rcS.d/S00knoppix-autoconfig (the line is "ldconfig; depmod -a 2>/dev/null") because it helped a lot to speed up booting. Is this something I should do? I'm not quite certain if it's necessary or not...

Any other tips on how to speed up DSL? Any help will be greatly appreciated - this laptop would have otherwise met a junkyard fate.

Thanks.

Posted by clivesay on May 17 2006,16:16

Booting with

Code Sample

dsl noscsi nousb

should take care of some of that. You may want to look over all the available Knoppix boot codes for more options. There is just a

Code Sample

lowram

boot option for DSL that also disables many things. That might be where I would start first.

Chris

Posted by cbagger01 on May 17 2006,17:14

Try booting with:

dsl noscsi nousb atapicd

at the boot prompt.

Posted by hansaad on May 17 2006,21:12

Since I've installed DSL to the hard drive, would these extra parameters go into the "append=" section of /etc/lilo.conf? Can I actually use the "dsl cheat codes"?

Posted by cbagger01 on May 18 2006,16:46

Yes