how fast is boot time

Forum: USB booting
Topic: how fast is boot time
started by: Trev

Posted by Trev on Mar. 31 2005,10:54

Hi all.

I am totally new to DSL. I am wanting to create a system for my car. What I am wondering is how long it takes to boot and shutdown a system from a usb drive. I know that is will vary on the hardware. I have been looking at the ITX boards and to be honest am not sure which one will do what I want yet. If you could tell me your set up and the boot time for an x window condiguration that would be really helpful for me.

many thanks

Trev

Posted by chickenman on April 03 2005,09:10

I find the boot-up time is quite long on my usb drive, about twice the time it takes to boot from CD, but the shutdown time seems about the same as runing off a hard-disk.

Some OS's take AGES to boot off a usb thumb drive (try Movix) DSL isn't too bad, in my experiances.

Posted by cbagger01 on April 04 2005,03:22

If you are looking for a "carputer" with flash memory storage instead of a spinning disk, you can skip the USB bus delay by doing the following:

1) Buy a compact flash card
2) Buy a compatct flash to IDE adapter.
3) Do a "frugal" install to the CF card while it is plugged in like a hard drive hda.

You can speed up the DSL boot process by entering some cheatcodes that bypass certain parts of the bootup process... nousb nofirewire etc

Posted by Trev on April 04 2005,07:46

thanks for the replies.

I managed to install DSL to a USB 2.0 stick. I must admit I did not realise how much faster the hard drive is. But booting from the USB does create a solid state solution and it does allow me to just switch the computer off without shutting down.

I was under the impression that USB 2 was quicker than Compact Flash. I need the usb ports for other stuff as well. I understand that I can still stop other bits of the process. I am trying to read as much as possible on how things boot up. I will not need the IDE controller stuff. Will I need to recompile the kernel to remove such things?

Thanks for your help

Trev

Posted by cbagger01 on April 04 2005,16:03

No,

Most of the kernel stuff is spit out into driver modules so it is very easy to avoid loading these drivers by either modifying the init scripts or by using the knoppix cheatcodes that will turn off parts of the autodetect process for you with no further effort required on your part.