faster boot


Forum: DSL Embedded
Topic: faster boot
started by: roberts

Posted by roberts on Feb. 26 2006,17:23
Since DSL embedded, using Qemu's virtual machine, has little to no access to the physical machine, I find I get noticeably faster boot times when adding the following to the end of the -append section of dsl-windows.bat   noscsi nousb nofirewire nopcmcia
Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 27 2006,05:57
Robert,

Some of these other codes might also speed things up, but then again maybe some of them are needed depending on your preferences, IE: sound

Code Sample
atapicd noideraid nosound noapic noacpi acpi=off noscsi noapm nousb nopcmcia nofirewire noagp nomce

Posted by roberts on Feb. 27 2006,06:27
Since the virtual machine has soundbaster I would like to try to preserve that one. Also, I was trying to hit the options that I could notice an improvement. Maybe a balance from having a very long append to speed improvement. But thanks, will test some more. On my old machine anything that helps helps me alot. I will add these to the next release of DSL.
Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 27 2006,06:43
Certainly some of them are worth doing due to the hardware specs:

atapicd = qemu has no CD burner. IDE-SCSI emulation not needed
noideraid = qemu has no IDE raid controller
noacpi = power management is irrelevent for a virtual PC
acpi=off   =  DITTO
noapm = DITTO
noscsi = no SCSI controllers or USB storage devices in QEMU
nousb = no USB controllers in QEMU
nofirewire = no firewire controllers in QEMU
noagp = assume emulated video card is NOT an AGP card
nopcmcia = no pcmcia controller in QEMU
nomce = no machine check exception handling is needed for a virtual PC

I am less sure about the appropriateness of:
nosound = we do have sound, but the driver is manually loaded by us. Maybe this cheatcode is still a good thing.  It is bad if the soundcard suddenly stops working.
noapic = I think virtual Pentium-II does have an APIC but could be wrong.

Posted by roberts on Feb. 27 2006,07:27
The power management options have negligible effect on speed of booting. apic is needed.
Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 27 2006,18:00
Some of these options may not improve boot speed much, but will improve RAM usage inside your virtual PC.

For example, if you do not need apm, there is no need to load apm management into RAM or you are just wasting RAM and CPU cycles.

Just my $0.02

Posted by roberts on Feb. 27 2006,19:43
Yes, indeed. I also personally use jwm and turn off torsmo, then Qemu becomes slightly more bearable. I don't have a powerful machine to run it on. But all these tweaks have made it easier for to support dsl-embedded on a 256MB 700Mhz machine. I will add those boot options in the next release.
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