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zenlord

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From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,223

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Boot linux in 5 seconds

Interesting article: http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/

If this is possible with Fedora, it should be possible with Arch, no?

In my specific case, I think udev is causing 10-15 seconds to populate /dev and connecting to the WPA2-network takes also 10 seconds. I might look into using udev only for removable storage - looks interesting.

Zl.

dav7

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 674

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

Well, speeding up Arch is going to be fun - unless you more or less forked the distro, you probably wouldn't get better than just short of 10 seconds, since udev is run twice: once in the initramfs disk to scan for HDDs and such, and again once the hard disk has mounted and all, and you'd have to do some serious hacking to make the initramfs get by without running udev that first time.

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-10-10 17:10:30)

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creslin

Member

Registered: 2008-10-04

Posts: 241

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

This blog from a mandriva dev talks about reducing boot times in a broader sense, rather than a "how I hacked my boot times for this 1 specific computer" sense.

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Dusty

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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2004-01-18

Posts: 5,986

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Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

Well, speeding up Arch is going to be fun - unless you more or less forked the distro, you probably wouldn't get better than just short of 10 seconds, since udev is run twice: once in the initramfs disk to scan for HDDs and such, and again once the hard disk has mounted and all, and you'd have to do some serious hacking to make the initramfs get by without running udev that first time.

No serious hacking required. Just recompile the kernel to not use initramfs at all and use an old fashioned static /dev filesystem. People used to do that instead of using devfs, I don't know of anyone doing it instead of udev, but I don't see why it couldn't be done trivially.

Dusty

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AsA

Member

From: Milan - Italy

Registered: 2008-10-05

Posts: 46

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

They've also hacked seriously the X server (without releasing the code), and they got 5 seconds only with an SSD drive... on magnetic hard drives their modified version of fedora would boot twice slower

Major distributions are already working on boot times, we'll see... for the moment Arch boot process still remains the better!

FALK

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 95

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

Old topic, but; has anyone tried it? git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/arjan/linux-2.6-fastboot.git

lf

Member

Registered: 2008-05-01

Posts: 17

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

I'm trying to try it, but I'm having some troubles 'cause I don't really know what I need or don't need to have built-in.

markp1989

Member

Registered: 2008-10-05

Posts: 431

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

the bigest thing in my boot is udev, in that atricle, it mentioned using a static /dev folder, instead of udev, how would i go about doing this?

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FALK

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 95

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

Compiled 2.6.27 with http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Fastboot_Patch_2_6_27 and CONFIG_FASTBOOT=y , shaved some seconds of the boot time, but have not measured it exactly yet.

haxit

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From: /home/haxit

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 1,247

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Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

Compiled 2.6.27 with http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Fastboot_Patch_2_6_27 and CONFIG_FASTBOOT=y , shaved some seconds of the boot time, but have not measured it exactly yet.

How do you do that exactly?

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FALK

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 95

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

Was lazy and didnt use a pkgbuild:
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6 … 27.tar.bz2
untar
patch -p1 < fastboot_2_6_27.diff ( http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Fastboot_Patch_2_6_27 )
Follow http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ker … nal_method and add CONFIG_FASTBOOT=y to config

Dunno if there's a diff for 2.6.27.4 or if it works anyway

honahursey

Member

Registered: 2008-08-18

Posts: 32

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

I've been using fastboot for a few weeks so far.  It definetly speeds up the kernel part of the boot process.  Haven't noticed it breaking anything yet so far.

haxit

Member

From: /home/haxit

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 1,247

Website

Re: Boot linux in 5 seconds

Alright, thanks FALK

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