> Hello, > > I don't know if any one else saw this article but it seemed very good to > me. > > http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-boot.html > > A chap at IBM Hursley, in the UK, has come up with a way to make Linux > boot faster using make.
And there have been other efforts too, such as serel (http://www.fast-boot.org IIRC). However, the speed advances aren't that exceptional, we could get at least 50% of the speed increase by not running depmod on every boot (which most of these methods avoid anyway ....). > I have not got around to trying it out. > However, given the speed that XP now starts up compared to most Linux > setups I would think anything to get the boot times down must be good. > I responded to this e-mail asking why everything needs to be started at > boot time. For example it takes a huge amount of time to get CUPS up > and running. Why not defer this until the first print job is required ? Well, in any network, CUPS would need to be running to allow the printers to be visible to other machines (whether via CUPS or Samba). Also, how do you start the service up for the user when they want to print? BTW, XP starts most services (look for spoolss.exe in the task manager before you print something) automatically, but I notice that (at least under Windows 2000), some things are only started up when a user logs in, and Windows 2000 Server takes an age to "Start network services" (although this could be due to some excessive time spent on DNS lookups for it's domain if the internet is not available ;-)). > It appears that extension of his idea could be to work out which > services really need to be started at boot time and which might be > deferred. First step is to not run depmod on every boot, which will save 10-15 seconds for everyone with minimal changes. Regards, Buchan
