Linux MCE - what is your fastest boot time?

[etheesdad]

Want to trim down the time MCE takes to load. Anyone achieved good boot speeds? How did you go about it?

[maybeoneday]

Hi  etheesdad,
-do you mean boot time for core/hybrid ?  ...if so you're sort of missing the point, ie LMCE is a HUGE piece of software which is designed to be on 24/7 and control the whole home ,it's not  solely  a media centre (even if  as I suspect , a lot of us use it that way) ..So actual boot time is irrelevant    ' )
If you mean  start up time of a media director, I think  that's largely down to limitations of PXE /hardware/AND , once more , the size (and capability) of the system......so it's a little like asking the 0-60
mph time  of  a  mobile crane  !
Having said that  I believe there have been discussions about  MD start up times/resuming from standby etc,
as there is a (valid ?) train of thought that an MD "should" behave like an appliance, and start in  as short a time as possible..-personally ,I  believe that although that's desirable,it's not all that important,as it gives me time for a bathroom  visit before i get into bed  !!

[indulis]

Nothing wrong with trying to make it boot faster IMHO.

Here is an article which may help.  If it works, put the info into the Wiki.  We can all use the time saved :-)

http://aldeby.org/blog/index.php/speed-up-your-ubuntu-linux-boot.html
http://www.planetmy.com/blog/improve-linux-boot-up-speed/
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/03/2126222

Runit is a replacement for the boot process.  Maybe not a great idea with LinuxMCE 710 but LMCE TNG???

[tschak909]

We need some people who are willing to dig into the pluto scripts, so that we could optimize the startup sequence (there are roughly 250 shell and perl and awk scripts that provide the internal plumbing at startup and otherwise.).. Experiments in parallelization and reduction can then be done.

-Thom

[indulis]

Thom,

I am willing to do some scripting work, as I have the skills to do this.  Have already started looking at scripts.  This may take a while though!

I have left room on my system for test partitions to create a trashable version of LinuxMCE.  Also backed up a post-install, pre-customise image of the system which I can use to reinstall. 

Would first like to get the system bedded down for a little while and get familiar with how it *should* work normally.

[hari]

zaerc already put work into using sysv style scripts to bring up the core.. there is some forum thread about that iirc

[Zaerc]

Have a look at this: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Clean_Core that might give some pointers.

[brake16]

I don't know enough about the MD startup scripts, but if PXE is part of the problem for the long boot time, would something like this help?  http://etherboot.org/wiki/about.  It looks like gPXE will be coming out "soon".  Would this be something worth trying, or does someone with more linuxMCE knowledge know why this is a non-starter?

This is a branch of coreboot (formerly LinuxBIOS) that aims to drastically cut down boot times.  Variations of coreboot are used in many 'appliance' applications.  See http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot for more.

brake16

[Techstyle]

I have tried to put gPXE on a USB stick to get around an MD without a PXE Boot ROM but was unsuccessful.  I will be continueing this effort once I get time.  I would like to see a guide to doing this as a file is downloadable from the gPXE website with the correct NIC driver already setup.

[brake16]

I would like to see a guide to doing this as a file is downloadable from the gPXE website with the correct NIC driver already setup.

Well, it's not a guide but from http://rom-o-matic.net/:

For help and information about getting your OS loaded with gPXE or Etherboot,
Visit the Etherboot Home Page at http://www.etherboot.org/
and join the Etherboot-Discuss mailing list.
Sign up at: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/etherboot-discuss


Real-time help is often available on IRC on the #etherboot channel of irc.freenode.net.

brake16

[Techstyle]

I followed the instructions on http://rom-o-matic.net/ and downloaded a boot ROM for my NIC

I then (sort of) followed the instructions for a USB Key from http://etherboot.org/wiki/removable 

such that I already had the rom so did not need to use the 'make' command

I used the 'dd' command to transfer the image to the USB Key but got an error message when trying to boot from it.

I was hoping to find an easier way than the Wiki page explaining how to do this with grub for those of us that are not so Linux familiar.  I need to do some more work and maybe I should take this to a separate thread

[Techstyle]

I split off the thread to http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=7930.0 if you want to talk about gPXE