DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Faster boot

It's probably been said before, maybe it's already possible, but just in case I'll say it anyway:

Every time I start DSL it spends a lot of time doing things like Autoconfiguring my devices, etc. It seems to me that most of this stuff could be skipped if I haven't made any changes to my hardware since the last time I booted - all the information related to the hardware setup/configuration could be saved in a file and just loaded at boot time. If I have made a change to my hardware, there could be a boot code to make it do all the detecting/configuring again.

Another small suggestion: The 'DSL At Work' page (linked to from the main DSL page) should be improved or removed.

It can be done, but only on "normal" hd-installs..

Hello fluppet,

Yes, this or a variation of it has been said lots of times as a search of the archives shows.

One thing that makes a difference is the type of install. A system that has to boot from a slow CDROM will naturally be slower than a frugal boot from a fast hard drive, or a boot from flash memory.

There are "cheatcodes" that can make a difference in booting speed, for example noscsi if you don't have any scsi devices or dma if you have a harddrive that is capable of dma, etc. Apparently it is even possible to remove some of the wait cycles in the init process to speed booting if one has the ability and experience to understand what they can modify.

It isn't reasonable to try and reprint all the possibilities here, have a read through the (several) pages of archived posts regarding boot speed.

I never totally understand why people are much concerned with boot speed, perhaps it matters more to people who boot up more often. Personally, I think having lots of RAM and booting toram, once a day, makes a fast DSL system for real work.

Quote (fluppet @ Aug. 07 2007,08:48)

...Every time I start DSL it spends a lot of time doing things like Autoconfiguring my devices, etc. It seems to me that most of this stuff could be skipped if I haven't made any changes to my hardware since the last time I booted - all the information related to the hardware setup/configuration could be saved in a file and just loaded at boot time. If I have made a change to my hardware, there could be a boot code to make it do all the detecting/configuring again....

fluppet - you might be interested to see onemyndseye's postings in this thread
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27478&highlight=
:;):

original here.