[TriLUG] Speeding up the boot process of a Linux box

[Kevin Otte]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 12:13:05PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> Here's a reason I might not want a machine to boot faster...
> 
> The boot procedures on my Mandriva machine are made to accommodate a wide 
> variety of situations. They include hardware and network detection. They've 
> encountered thousands of hours of testing, and are proven. It takes less than 
> 5 minutes to boot, and I boot usually only once a day, in the morning when I 
> begin work.

That's just it.  They are time tested (roughly 30 years in fact) and proven
serial methods of booting.  With the advent of hotplug hardware and the
like, the ability to handle such things has been grafted on to the process. 
What upstart seeks to do is make the entire shooting match event driven such
that handling of these events happens closer to the core.  This just happens
to (hopefully) have the added benefit of a faster boot time.

> Less than 5 minutes, during which I can do other stuff anyway, is a tiny price 
> to pay for the privelege of having rugged, tested and versatile boot code.

My laptop (an old Mobile Celeron) boots up in about a minute and small
change.  I'm looking forward to seeing if upstart can improve on that.  I
imagine most other distros will wait to see if Ubuntu sinks or swims on
upstart before they look at it.  It may be quite awhile before it gets
adopted wide scale, but by then it will be rugged, tested, and definitely
more versatile code.

-- 
Kevin Otte, N8VNR
nivex at nivex.net
http://www.nivex.net/

-=-

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"It seems no one reads Santayana anymore."
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