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slaichus
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Joined: 06 Nov 2010
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 Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 5:17 am Post subject: Fast boot? (naive questions from a newbie) |
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Hi!
I want a system that can boot very quickly (<15 sec not on ssd?) and is capable of normal internet browsing (and nothing else). I also have no experience at all with anything beyond Ubuntu 
Firstly, is Gentoo the right choice? I tried many ready-for-use allegedly-fast-booting systems (incl. DSL, Puppy, Tiny Core, and others), and they all seem to take at least 30s (except xPUD, which did it in 15, but is unusable). So (correct me if I'm wrong) it seems that I will have to build my own system. Is this the right place?
According to the limited reading around that I did, booting involves slow steps like polling for new hardware, various checks for various things, etc. If we assume that my computer will never change, could all such checks be eliminated by "hard-wiring" the answers during compilation?
Since I won't do anything but internet browsing (turn on, check random fact on wikipedia, turn off), can everything that serves other purposes be cut out?
What else could be done?
If my questions have already been answered somewhere, sorry for repeating - I did search first! |
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Muso
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Joined: 22 Oct 2002
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Location: The Holy city of Honolulu
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| Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 5:31 am Post subject: |
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My Phenom ][ box boots in about 15 seconds... but I don't use XDM (or GDM, KDM, Entrance, etc).
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ToeiRei
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Location: Austria
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| Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 2:50 pm Post subject: |
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the problem is not gentoo as such - it's the way you set it up.
Try init-ng or things like that to start services in parallel - gentoo delivers that in portage.
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molot
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Joined: 26 Feb 2005
Posts: 214
Location: Warsaw, Poland
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| Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2010 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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init-ng
minimal installation possible
lightweight window manager
passwordless login
some browser autostarting
That's all you need. To make it even faster, you may boot it only once, then suspend to disk, and then each time just "resume". That's about the way gaming consoles boot. But that's a bit risky on linux pcas our OSes don't support the fact that some of the disk space will stay unchanged and some may change. However, if you'll make the browser only touch data on one (only one writable) partition, setup mounting that partition before browser's start, and unmount it just before hibernating, your boot procedure will go that way:
1) bootloader
2) unpacking ram image from disk to ram (very fast on ssd)
3) mounting partition for changing data
4) starting browser
Can't do faster. 1-3 are doable in less than 5s, tested.
To "shutdown" you need only close the browser, umount data partition and poweroff.
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Goverp
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Joined: 07 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 10:50 am Post subject: Re: Fast boot? (naive questions from a newbie) |
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| slaichus wrote: | ...
According to the limited reading around that I did, booting involves slow steps like polling for new hardware, various checks for various things, etc. If we assume that my computer will never change, could all such checks be eliminated by "hard-wiring" the answers during compilation?
... |
Much of the initial startup time goes to the Linux kernel detecting hardware, so if you build a custom kernel with support only for the devices you have, it can cut kernel initialization by, at a guess, about half. You can do this on any Linux distribution, but Gentoo encourages it by not shipping a default kernel, whereas Ubuntu, Red Hat etc. ship a default "everything supported" kernel.
The init system consumes more than half the time at boot. Gentoo offers two, the default "baselayout" version 1 system written in Bash scripts, and "OpenRC", which goes with baselayout 2, and is written in C. It's about twice as quick. Using a custom kernel and OpenRC, my (admittedly powerful) desktop machine boots in about 20 seconds to the KDE logon; before using OpenRC, it took about 50 seconds.
You can get even more by enabling parallel init operation, but I had a problem with that - when it worked it booted in 16 seconds, but about half the time it locked up.
You can cut the time from power off to running even more by enabling hibernation. My netboot starts up in about 11 seconds using this. To enable hibernation, you must allocate a large enough swap partition/file, and select hibernation support in the kernel, pointing at this swap partition. You don't need to install special kernel versions such as Tuxonice if you use KDE - KDE 4 power management includes hibernation support, and does enough for my needs. {EDIT: You need some suspend scripts, specifically the sys-power/hibernate-script package for the "hibernate-cleanup" script.}
The Gentoo Power Management Guide contains more information, but leads, IMHO, to an over-complex setup if you follow all its suggestions.
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Last edited by Goverp on Wed Nov 10, 2010 9:07 am; edited 1 time in total |
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dmpogo
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Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 3267
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 12:54 pm Post subject: Re: Fast boot? (naive questions from a newbie) |
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| Goverp wrote: | | slaichus wrote: | ...
According to the limited reading around that I did, booting involves slow steps like polling for new hardware, various checks for various things, etc. If we assume that my computer will never change, could all such checks be eliminated by "hard-wiring" the answers during compilation?
... |
Much of the initial startup time goes to the Linux kernel detecting hardware, so if you build a custom kernel with support only for the devices you have, it can cut kernel initialization by, at a guess, about half. You can do this on any Linux distribution, but Gentoo encourages it by not shipping a default kernel, whereas Ubuntu, Red Hat etc. ship a default "everything supported" kernel.
The init system consumes more than half the time at boot. Gentoo offers two, the default "baselayout" version 1 system written in Bash scripts, and "OpenRC", which goes with baselayout 2, and is written in C. It's about twice as quick. Using a custom kernel and OpenRC, my (admittedly powerful) desktop machine boots in about 20 seconds to the KDE logon; before using OpenRC, it took about 50 seconds.
You can get even more by enabling parallel init operation, but I had a problem with that - when it worked it booted in 16 seconds, but about half the time it locked up.
You can cut the time from power off to running even more by enabling hibernation. My netboot starts up in about 11 seconds using this. To enable hibernation, you must allocate a large enough swap partition/file, and select hibernation support in the kernel, pointing at this swap partition. You don't need to install special kernel versions such as Tuxonice or the suspend scripts package if you use KDE - KDE 4 power management includes hibernation support, and does enough for my needs.
The Gentoo Power Management Guide contains more information, but leads, IMHO, to an over-complex setup if you follow all its suggestions. |
I am always surprised by one aspect of these (valid in its own sense) discussions - on my computers, already for quite some time, BIOS init sequence takes as much if not longer than subsequent linux init. Especially initilaization of AHCI disks. And this is with baselayout 1, not extensive but healthy set of init services and going to KDM. Aren't we at the point of diminishing return here ? |
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molot
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Joined: 26 Feb 2005
Posts: 214
Location: Warsaw, Poland
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 1:09 pm Post subject: Re: Fast boot? (naive questions from a newbie) |
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| dmpogo wrote: | | Aren't we at the point of diminishing return here ? |
Nope, on the netbook / nettop we are not. Those have bioses "cut to size" - when only disk and ram size can change, bios init can be (and in my experience is) almost instant. Like 3s max. The OP asked for an internet browser system, so I guess we are talking about netbook here.
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dmpogo
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Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 3267
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 2:01 pm Post subject: Re: Fast boot? (naive questions from a newbie) |
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| molot wrote: | | dmpogo wrote: | | Aren't we at the point of diminishing return here ? |
Nope, on the netbook / nettop we are not. Those have bioses "cut to size" - when only disk and ram size can change, bios init can be (and in my experience is) almost instant. Like 3s max. The OP asked for an internet browser system, so I guess we are talking about netbook here. |
Ok, on my laptop bios is 10-11 sec, and subsequent linux init to KDM is 17 sec. |
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molot
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Joined: 26 Feb 2005
Posts: 214
Location: Warsaw, Poland
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| Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 3:00 pm Post subject: Re: Fast boot? (naive questions from a newbie) |
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| dmpogo wrote: | | Ok, on my laptop bios is 10-11 sec, and subsequent linux init to KDM is 17 sec. |
On my Puma platform laptop it's similar case. But I can change cpu, wifi card, hard and optical drive, even bluetooth seems changable, not to say about expansion slot and docking station slot. Bios has to live with that.
My friend's netbook is a closed-case thing. Only thing that may be changed is to add second ram dice. Maybe change hdd, but I'm not sure. That's one or two things to check, when ram check is negible and disk must be of given kind to work anyway.
So I had both of them side by side. With bios fast boot option - small weak netbook started much faster.
Not to mention on netbooks each cycle saved provides much more real time saved due to slower cpu
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jimfaster
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Joined: 09 Feb 2011
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 6:59 am Post subject: Re: Fast boot? (naive questions from a newbie) |
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| Better you go through the reviews of new mac pc launched last month. Its unique & superb than other PCs. It takes less time to boot. (than windows & previous mac pcs) |
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cwr
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Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Posts: 1969
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2011 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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My laptop (an elderly T23 with a 5400 rpm drive and 512MB of RAM) takes 30 sec.
from grub prompt to runlevel 3, and a further 7 seconds to a login prompt. From
login to working Gnome desktop takes another 20 seconds. That's with no
modules loaded except for scsi_wait_scan, and no optimisation for boot speed.
I think if you want real speed you're going to need specific hardware, eg. some sort
of netbook, or keep the system hibernated.
Will |
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Installing Gentoo
