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Re: [LUG] Linux booting in less than 1.5 seconds

 

On Wed, 15 Jul 2009, Rob Beard wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> Just seen this on The Register...
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/14/montavista_boasts_1sec_linux_boot/
>
> Looks like Montavista have tailored a version of Linux which boots in
> less than 1.5 seconds.
>
> The catch is, it's been optimised for their embedded platform which is
> aimed at use in vehicle systems (so car displays and satnav etc).
>
> Still, 1 second boot is pretty cool.

Very impressive...

I've recently built up a system to run under the AMD Geode processor - 
500MHz i686 look-a-like chip.

Power on to boot is a few seconds. I could probably make it less, but I 
can't turns off the memory test which prints progress out via a serial 
line, then waits a second for the CF IDE drive to settle.

So to boot - it needs to load a compressed bzImage off flash, then load a 
compressed initrd.gz off the same flash, uncompress them then launch the 
kernel. That alone takes some 5-10 seconds.

Then the kernel starts - it takes a relatively long time to get through 
all the kernel initialisation - CPU, memory, hardware (on-board IDE, 
Ethernet, serial) Even in quick mode (no printout via the serial line) 
this still takes some 20 seconds.

Then /sbin/init starts and the usual /etc/init.d/xxx scripts get their 
chance to initialise.

So how can they get the entire kernel startup to a second?!? If I could 
get power-on to /sbin/init down to under 10 seconds I'd be extremely 
happy...

Gordon

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