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Topic: toram option, speed of boot sequence

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yodelaye

Group: Members
Posts: 16
Joined: Feb. 2007

Posted: May 03 2007,17:21

hi
I have 2 questions about the toram option :

1) 1st I would like to check about the performance of my hardware.
I use DSL-N frugal install with toram option
during boot sequence the system is copied into RAM
the speed of this operation is about 3MB/s
as DSL-N is about 100MB this is time consuming
This transfer rate from HDD to RAM looks quite slow
May I have your feedback about this speed ?

2) since :
- my hardware is not changing between 2 consecutive boots
- the system is copied into ram at boot
would there be a way to store the system state at the shut down request and restore it without a complete boot sequence a next boot ?

may be this is not clear.
let's assume the following :
- I boot, toram is working fine and during boot sequence mydsl extensions are correctly found, /home is mounted /opt also,etc...
- the content of the RAM is then the full system including expected user tuning
- on next boot why not to load into ram this exact RAM state instead of a fresh new one ?

this is may be not possible because of what has to be done during boot. (boot is still a huge mystery to me)
But it would mean a super fast starting sequence

Note :
I know some will say I dont have to shut down my system every day as linux is super stable and can run without reboot for days, months, years, and even decade !
but, noise and power saving are enough to make me do so...

yodelaye

^thehatsrule^ Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 3275
Joined: July 2006

Posted: May 03 2007,21:56

1. Are you using DMA? Regular sustained reading speeds for 7200rpm drives can be around 65MB/s. You can use hdparm to run some tests (and set dma on the fly).

2. You can remaster so that the KNOPPIX image is smaller, therefore less to copy over with toram. You can also use a number of cheatcodes, etc. to prevent probing of certain devices. You can also disable all probing and just load the modules you need, or delete the ones you don't need... etc.

Juanito

Group: Members
Posts: 1601
Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: May 04 2007,09:20

Or... you could try suspend-to-RAM/suspend-to-HD - these are supposed to work with 2.6.x (i.e. DSL-N).

Unfortunately, I can suspend without apparent problems but I cannot resume afterwards...

Using the dma boot code on my machine speeded up loading the KNOPPIX image from 3MB/s to 20MB/s

yodelaye

Group: Members
Posts: 16
Joined: Feb. 2007

Posted: May 04 2007,14:56

hi

thanks for the answers.
I added the dma option to my boot cheatcodes and speed increased from 3MB to about 20MB as for Juanito.
thanks for the hint, I d simply missed this cheatcode
looks like the complete boot sequence is faster, not only the part where the system ic copied into RAM. yeah !

I did not know about these suspend things but I think this is what I was looking for. I will google a bit to learn more about that.
but I dont have a laptop and 1st info I ve seen were all laptop focused.

yodelaye

3 replies since May 03 2007,17:21

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