Hi all.

For my EFIKA project, boottimes should be as short as possible.
I've followed the normal route for this: disabling everything in the kernel that is not used, running start-up scripts asynchronously, etc.

However, I had the following idea a while ago, and I would like to hear some opinions about it.
Since our system boots from a read-only Compact Flash card, would it be possible to create a ram-image of the running system right after startup (with something like swsusp or suspend2), store it on to the flash (which would need to be mounted r/w at that point), and then just restore this one next boottime?
Could this increase startup speed, as there is no need for parsing files at startup etc?
This way, when in production, all systems could boot faster, as they are restoring an image of an identical system. Also, no need to suspend at shutdown, just turn of fthe device

If I'm way off here, please let me know
Best regards,
Johan

Hi,

there was a nice talk about this at the fosdem. You can find a video of this here: http://free-electrons.com/pub/video/fos ... ations.ogg
torrent: http://free-electrons.com/torrent/fosde ... gg.torrent

more vids:
http://free-electrons.com/community/videos/conferences

Thanks for the link, will check it out.

Ever since I moved to Finland, I really mis FOSDEM...


Best regards,
Johan

Hi !

That's funny because I also need a fast boot for my EFIKA project and started a thread on the same subject.
There are a few ideas inside.
Maybe we could work together on this point ?

See : "Very fast boot under linux"
http://www.ppczone.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=491

So you guys already received your efika?

I'm just curious since you are already starting to tune the bootup-process.

No !
Not at all !
I'm just thinking about it and using my ODW/PegII for current tests.

DerCorny:
No, no EFIKA yet, emulating the PowerPC on QEmu and tuning there. Don't even have actual PowerPC hardware to test it on.
I just need a fast boot for this:
http://projects.ppczone.org/projects.php?project=60
which will look like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69943045@N00/103810021/

geoffrey_charra:
Just read that thread. Indeed, many things there which I already tried out. Somehow though, even after all those suggestions I estimate it is too slow for my project. Thats why I originally had the idea of using MorphOS, but support seems a problem, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of software available for my application use.
Thats why I thought of having a hibernate mode without the hibernate Just restore a predefined RAM-image at boottime. It could even make certain applications start faster (such as FireFox) due to being in memory already.
I would like to work together, but I need some actual hardware before I'm able to contribute anything substantial. I will however make a Gentoo image under VMWare and see if I can get some statistics regarding suspend2 or swsusp for an environment similar to what I need for my EFIKA project.

If only I had an EFIKA already

Best regards,
Johan

Heh, i thought about that, too. But i don't own other ppc hardware right now and I don't know if I can make accurate tests and development with pearpc or qemu. Are there any detailed docs about efika yet?

@PurpleAlien
Well my official project is the EFIKA book (http://projects.ppczone.org/projects.php?project=29), but my second one is a multimedia player (see: http://empx.free.fr).
So your ideas are interesting to me too !
I was also thinking about making a gentoo distrib with very few apps...
And I was also thinking of using MorphOS, but as you said we are not sure that it will be supported...

@DerCorny No, but I think (and hope) that it will come soon.
I'm also waiting for my Efika book project

see those threads :
-EFIKA hardware specification request
-The EFIKA book - alpha 0.1 version

Hi !

I've seen that the latest version of Ubuntu has received boot improvement. That might help to look at it :
See here :
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing

enlightenment .17 starts in less than a second no matter where you are (tested on my G4 1000, old amd athlon).

having your kernel book in quiet mode cuts some seconds and parallel init strategies help a bit too (see gentoo init or init-ng)