suggestions for faster boot times requested

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: suggestions for faster boot times requested
started by: phlapjack77

Posted by phlapjack77 on Feb. 11 2005,16:24

I'm looking to improve boot up time for my DSL system. Granted, I'm using a VIA 600mhz system, booting off of a USB stick, but the time from power-on to usability is right at 2 minutes.

I'm doing a restore, and I have about 2-3 myDSL items loaded. I've used the syslinux boot-time options of toram, no SCSI, pcmcia, etc.

I've read the topic at:
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....nd+boot >
but I can't find the autoconfiguration file or where the heck to change it so that ld.so.cache isn't rebuilt.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Phillip

Posted by phlapjack77 on Feb. 12 2005,10:20

hmmm, 35 views and no responses.

that kind of viewage makes me think either:
1) people saw my question, and weren't able to help with it, or
2) people saw my question, and thought "what a dumb noob"

i'm praying it's not the second :blues:

Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 12 2005,14:35

I'm in the first category...I really don't know how to help much.

I assume it boots in the same manner as a liveCD, where it configures your hardware on every boot? If so, this would take a good portition of that time. I don't think there are many services starting automatically in DSL, which is the first thing I check to lower bootup time.

You could remove the "enhance" part of xinitrc to shave off a few seconds (and a few applications), or remove "startx" for .bash_profile to avoid loading the graphical system all together.

Apart from that, I don't know much...2 minutes doesn't sound bad for what DSL has to do during boot.

Posted by phlapjack77 on Feb. 12 2005,16:47

thanks for the reply mikshaw...

yeah, it's configuring on every boot. most of the time wasteage seems to happen loading linux24 and minirt24. guess it can't be helped.

thanks,
phillip

Posted by tronik on Feb. 13 2005,06:03

if you remaster (or look at the minirt.gz file) minirt, you will find inside the actual init. that is what you can edit to take time off of your bootup.

this process can be found on the forums (mounting the minirt, editing, saving)

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 13 2005,07:27

Skip big parts of your /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig

and you should boot up faster.

Posted by subarus on Feb. 13 2005,08:12

Goal: To reduce DSL bootup time

USB, PCMCIA ,scsi detection ~ 8 secs
toram from cdrom ~20secs
toram from flash ~8 secs
dhcp ~2secs
read access time (slow to fast) : cdrom, hd, flash, ram

without remastering , ie editing linuxrc or init files in minirt24, just by using boot options, I manage to bootup in 41 seconds with with these boot options : base,fromhd=/dev/hda5 nomce, nopcmcia, noapm, noswap, noagp, noscsi, base

I think I can shed a few more secs off, my initial goal is ~30 seconds . Although read access time for flash is faster than hd but the usb flash detections wasted precious secs. So I think compact flash ide is the fastest boot media. I think boot from iso is faster than compressed imaged, although I dont know for sure. I dont have a cf ide module to try.

once the components are selected, then its time to remove all hardware detections from the init files and just enable what needs to be enabled eg monitor, hardisk, ram, cdrom. other modules will be enabled manually after bootup eg. static ip & usb & sound card

anybody got ideas to make bootup to useability (presumably fluxbox) less than 30 seconds?

updates:
1) bootfrom option is faster than fromhd option in bootup time ~3 secs faster. there sleep time everywhere in the init, linuxrc files; so these are low hanging fruits. I am able to achieve ~30 secs time without much effort.

usb can be enabled by modprobe usbcore; modprobe usb-uhci in bootlocal.sh in small fraction of seconds.

note: I am on IBM Thinkpad T41 with 512 MegRam and only 1.6 Ghz Bania processor.

Posted by cd.ito on Mar. 06 2005,22:19

if you like bets, you can try to replace X with xdirectfb that has a shorter start time, tested on every system.

If you do, make an how to and post it!

Buona fortuna.