How fast? Well that all depends on the speed of the hardware, but:
1) Solid state disks boot faster than magnetic ones.
2) Cut kernel down to bare bones and use modules so e.g. networks drivers are
only loaded once they required and thus do not take time loading during the
boot sequence.
3)The last part of the boot sequence (going to user runlevel) is all about
starting deamons such as ftpd, httpd, lpd, crond etc. Cut the ones not
required from the rc.d, and ones that are required, but not necessesarily
before the user screen (most of them actually) could be stuck into a script
for deffered activation.
4)Use kernel parameters to pass configuration options to drivers rather than
having them probed (some probes have serious timeouts).
5)Define **only** the exact video mode you intend to use in the X
configurtation.
6)Reccomend that users boot the machine in the vicinity of a very dense
objest, such as the quickstart guide to NT.
Chuck Carlson wrote:
> Hello,
>
> One of the problems my employer has about using Linux in an embedded
> project is the boot time. Is it possible to bootup a minimal linux
> system from flash memory to the login prompt in under 5 seconds? How long
> to get a X-server running? Are there any tricks one can use to get faster
> boot times?
>
> Thanks for any thoughts,
>
> Chuck Carlson
