Introduction
On the Linux Plumbers Conference in 2008 it was shown in a talk how to boot an ASUS EeePC 901 in five seconds. The slides are available too.
A Fedora 9 system and a Moblin system were used for demonstration.
This page is dedicated to give instructions how to port and implement the used techniques on a Debian GNU/Linux system.
Remark
There are already some other pages available in this Wiki dealing with shortening the booting time. In the end the results of this page, which are not suitable implementing in a standard Debian installation should be incorporated there or be linked from there.
On the list for the DebianEeePC some work was already done.
Mailinglist
It is thought about to set up a dedicated list for this task on for example Alioth. If someone wants to go ahead please do.
Implementation
Different means were used in the talk, which can be seen on the slides, and time limits were set for each component.
- Splash Screens
- Kernel (1 second)
- Early Userspace (1 second)
- X.org (1 second)
- Desktop/GUI (2 seconds)
Splash Screens
Debian does not use any, so nothing to do here.
Kernel
Use of sReadAhead.
?Build a custom Linux kernel image with no modules and no initrd. An example config file for an ASUS Eee PC can be found at DebianEeePC/TipsAndTricks.
Early Userspace
Use of sysvinit. That is the standard in all Debian releases until now.
Use persistent entries in /dev/ to save time, that udev does not need to regenerate everything each time booting. See also this post.
- Use a new version of HAL, where some algorithms were optimized.
X.org
- Let Linux kernel setup the video hardware.
- Reuse keyboard mappings.
Desktop/GUI
- Do not use GDM. Or just use the simple theme.
- Boot directly into a user session. (How-To in the Wiki?)
please, rename this page with a standard and explicit name... and/or just merge this page in BootProcessSpeedup. -- FranklinPiat 2008-10-19 14:02:15