[vox-if] [Fwd: Installfest RSVP]

[Jeremy Brown]

I can't make it, but I installed a linux system and made an effort at
making it boot quickly and I think I cut boot time to 1/3 or 1/4 of the
original boot time (fresh install of RH9). I think it booted in 20
seconds to a prompt and 30 seconds to a logged-in gui (from power-off).
I can give a general idea of the things I went after. There were two
main areas I looked at. The first was all the rc.d entries. I went from
something like 40 S entries to 5 or 6 I think. That made a huge
difference and was very easy. The other thing I did, which is probably a
little more risky, was I hacked around in rc.sysinit. Basically, I'd
comment out sections that didn't look like they did anything one at a
time to see if it helped. If I remember right, there were also some
loops where I could do some manual loop unrolling and eliminate most of
the iterations. That may be getting a little complex for an installfest,
but it was fun! By the way, I messed around with making custom kernels
with unnecessary modules removed and that kind of thing. I made some
smaller kernels, but no noticeably faster ones, so I think it'd probably
best to avoid that method. Good luck to whoever works on it.
-Jeremy


On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:47:41 -0800, "Jonathan Stickel"
<jjstickel at sbcglobal.net> said:
> This one wants linux to boot "fast"

> 16_Problems: I would like to run the fastest possible Linux distro & GUI 
> desktop for this machine (although I would sacrifice 10% of performance 
> for usability and maintainability), and use it for web browsing, VoIP, 
> and audio/video.  It must fully reboot (from old GUI desktop through 
> BIOS boot to new GUI desktop) as least as quickly as Windows 98SE (which 
> takes 110 seconds).  (I would prefer not to login; kiosk mode is fine.) 
>   I guess that means Vector Linux, Libranet, or (tweaked) Debian, with 
> IceWM or similar, but I am all ears.