5 secs SL boot with in reach.

[WarraWarra]

After a recent post I decided to dive into the 5 sec SL boot idea and ended up trying out http://moblin.org/ as they have customized netbook distro and it worked on my laptop and booted into Xfce desktop minus a few drivers and networking etc but booted in 5 secs into gui with everything finished, mind you it is with OCZ 30GB SSD so cheated a bit there LOL.

Then the thought came to me but hey we have a eeepc / netbook in MCE why not tweak it to do the same as surely I am not that good with Fedora and has been a few million years since I messed with RPM / Debian based distro's so very rusted and I like Gentoo based / SL distro's much more.

We have everything we need just need to do it and it is so easy.

This led to how it can be done and well we have to tweak the netbook MCE version and possibly have it add extra functionality during live cd /dvd boot to add extra drivers to get all hardware to work then during install dump all un-needed drivers and stuff so that only What-Is-Needed gets installed and used.

Problems:
* I could see is that during update in future it might end up installing a lot of useless deps and addons that later needs to be removed and this can be a pain.
* Also might need to rebuild the whole kernel with tweaks and against Ulibc and a few others same as would be done with your wifi router firmware etc , then the question but if it gets Ulibc then surely it can be used to replace horribly slow DirectTV HD box OS and Wifi routers etc firmware / Os's.

This opens up a whole new world of opportunity's and we would not be limited by lack of software or updates that happens 9 months after the update is released , we would have it immediately and or same time as gentoo depending if we build it ourself's or not.

But then we might later just replace the whole SL base with a Netbook UMPC base and so improve speed and functionality of all pc's / servers that ends up using SL.
The team did most of the SL UMPC ground work now a world without bloat-ware can exist.

Used to install the UMPC onto my laptop and it worked.
So why not have the best of both worlds, 5secs + UMPC SL installed on my laptop E1705 nvidia 7800GTX ( yeah the 7950gtx broke after 2 years of 90C games torture so went back to old faithful 7800gtx LOL )
and this way we can make it fast , really really fast and functional.

Now to learn from the rest and tweak the best

Man I love SL.

PS> Anyone wanting to help just shout as I will make a testing folder on ibiblio and we can host this there for anyone to tryout the latest tweaks without support or liability and later make it part of the SL mainstream project / release.

[Ric]

I like the idea just from the point of view of keeping an install lean and clean. ( if it boots that fast you know it can't have much bloat )
Personaly, I just 'suspend' the computer instead of turning it off. SL is stable enough I can go for weeks without bothering to power down

[WarraWarra]

If I install the UMPC "no 3d" on my laptop then I can get down closer to 20 or 15 secs without any major tweaking and no recompiling just basic settings with default kernel. Similar hardware to UMPC in my laptop.

Never tried the suspend thing yet. Should be worth trying as I see with sensors-detect and then say i8krellm install my laptop fans and temp control works perfect every time so should be as easy with other hardware and temp control as well = good for sleep / suspend.

Think if someone wanted to get it nice and lean the server install should be much faster and then no splash screen for gui and verbose splash for booting. The devlpm. team have to have a lot of modules during boot to make it most compatible with all the hardware out there.

The moblin thing was good for working but came in at about 320mb and then still had no proper way of installing extra software / easy enough way to make it widely usable and a few other things that needs major attention.

If we released the UMPC in cd stand alone format it will have everything and 100% working user friendly for about 300mb or less and could come in at under 15 secs boot time as UMPC's only have so much hardware variations without any tweaking and a lot of laptops / apple hardware is ich6/7/8/9/10 just might need a driver for Nvidia or ATI and a few odd ball network drivers.

[jasherai]

Hi,

was wondering if you have had anymore progress on this that you wouldn't mind reporting back?

I believe one of the moblin enhancements is sreadahead. I haven't yet recompiled my kernel to use the open-trace patch required to use it, but was wondering if you have had any experience with it? If it is stable enough, I don't see why it shouldn't be part of default SL, perhaps a, configurable, weekly cron to wipe the pack file, and there by keep it optimised?

Would definitely appreciate any insights your testing has gleaned!

jasherai

[WarraWarra]

Cut back my SL / linux hours but have found that any amd based x4 PII 955cpu to x2 3800 I have tested defaults to 16 secs. minm. during boot before loading openrc where Intel based cpu is anywhere from 4 to 8 secs. on default 4.1 / later kernels. "grub to openrc time"
Best is to get the methods they use in moblin and try it + can still have a generic genkernel to support a lot of hardware and nearly similar or a sec / 2 slower instead of only naked kernel as they do.

Python 2.6.x mixed with gcc4.4.x and custom kernel can get you to think that you upgraded your cpu + ram = much more responsive on default SL4.1 .
The 3.4 mini and 3.5pod defaults are "boot menu to openrc" in 7 secs. or less where 4.1 takes avg 11 to 12 secs for same process.
Killing the floppy = upto 4 secs saved during boot, no idea if a floppy / stiffy drive still exists or where to get disks for it.

Default SL4.1 xfce installed on my intel laptop can get down to tweaked 8 secs total boot time / no login screen / no splash screen and a lot of removed unneeded modules etc. once in xfce I start networking when needed. Can then custom kernel and shave a bit more of this time.

You can have a look at the gentoo minimal cd and what it loads during boot is really what you need period, you can load any other gimmicks once the system is up and running or parallel and get some in there to keep the cpu busy.
Increasing the ram drive from 4mb to 16mb should make a difference, all depends on hardware you have.

Using Intel t2600 2.16ghz on Dell E1705 nvidia 7800gtx ddr2 667hmz gskill, 7200rpm seagate or 30gb ocz hotswap and very similar results,
-mtune=i686 -march=x86 MAKEOPTS="-j16 -s"

Readahead works on custom kernel same as you suggested and a few other mods. , will next try with 2.6.31-rc1 / rc2 kernel as time permits.

You can try with a funtoo stage 3 optimized for your hardware + custom kernel and rebuild using eglibc or uclibc and gcc 4.4.* and openrc 5.0 or 5.1 then add custom SL artwork or a combination of this.

I have found that x86 runs much faster and less buggy than i686 on most kernels I tried , using it as base and custom building to cpu specs = better results.

You should be able to pickup decent ideas from embedded stuff like wrt wifi routers and its tweaks for size and combine with moblin ideas = very fast minimal system.

eglibc vs uclibc

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http://www.google.com/intl/en/#hl=en&q=eglibc+vs+uclibc&aq=1&oq=eglibc&aqi=g%3As1g1&fp=kE0CVI1PqvM