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

[OlsonE at aosa.army.mil]

I suppose now wouldn't be the time to mention how fast my Gentoo system
boots up *grin*

eric

-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On
Behalf Of Kevin Otte
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 1:50 PM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Speeding up the boot process of a Linux box

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/

-=-

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 
-- George Santayana

"It seems no one reads Santayana anymore."
-- Cdr. Susan Ivanova, Babylon 5

-- 
TriLUG mailing list        :
http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
TriLUG Organizational FAQ  : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member
Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/