How I Modified Fedora To Boot In Under 25 Seconds

[ghenry]

Very nice read (I will be trying this out later):

http://www.improvedsource.com/content/view/13/2/

Everyone wants a quick boot time, from the beginner user to the advanced user, this is a issue that bothers us all. As Linux has advanced it has increasingly become slower to boot. I have tested on my machine 4 Linux distributions: Linspire, Fedora 3 & 4, Suse 9.2 & 9.3, and Debian. And on average between all these distributions Linux needs around a minute to 1 and half minutes to go from boot loader to graphical login screen. So I decided to look into reducing the time it takes to boot my current setup, which is Fedora 4. In doing so I was able to reduce the boot time of my Fedora 4 installation to less than 25 seconds (just above 24 seconds on average). Below I have documented what I did, and what you can use to potentially reduce your boot up time for Linux.

[imdeemvp]

I am pretty sure I saw some similiar info ealier.......thanks for sharing.

EDITED: i was correct here it is: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=66751

[handy]

Hmm this early login wasn't any difference for me

Thanks for the nice article! Inspecting my services did make quite a difference. Didn't have the courage to start recompiling my kernel (yet).

Unfortunately, I found out that X is still started twice: Once early in the boot process, once at the very end, so it seems early-login wasn't enabled. I ran the chkconfig commands as root. Did people manage to get it working?

[weinerdogus]

Enabling early login made no difference for me. Perhaps the key is recompiling the kernel?

[ghaefb]

About that early-login... I think the author of the article forgot one important thing
After all the chkconfig you need to add a 'early-login' to the kernel line in /etc/grub.conf

My grub.conf:

title Fedora Core 4(2.6.12-1.1398_FC4)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.12-1.1398_FC4 ro root=/dev/hda3 vga=0x318 early-login
initrd /initrd-2.6.12-1.1398_FC4.img

[A-fil]

Lets say I disable wine at bootup, then how do I enable it again? (while running)

ghaefb: Thanks, that did it. It costs me the graphical boot progress screen but I don't consider that a terrible loss.
A-fil: I thought you can just type

wine file.exe

at the shell prompt.

[hiberphoptik]

interesting... my system boots up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay under 1 minute, if it took 1 minute i would probly assume something was broken!

i am not sitting at the machine now but i would guess it takes about 15-20 seconds.

only services i need are network, cron, and a couple others so my bootup is lightning fast, im sure a fast processor is a huge help too

[ThijsH]

Great :-) It works, but it can work better. The X-server tries to start 3 times. The first 2 times it crashed, because xfs isn't loaded yet. The third time the X-server starts without problems, because xfs is started then. How can I make xfs start earlier ?

- Thijs

[ghaefb]

Originally Posted by ThijsH

Great :-) It works, but it can work better. The X-server tries to start 3 times. The first 2 times it crashed, because xfs isn't loaded yet. The third time the X-server starts without problems, because xfs is started then. How can I make xfs start earlier ?

- Thijs

Here are some more details about early-login and xfs:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg00416.html

Well this is the important part anyway:

Next thing you'll want to do is to change the chkconfig: line
in /etc/init.d/xfs to
# chkconfig: 2345 08 97

and also change the chkconfig: line in /etc/init.d/syslog to
# chkconfig: 2345 07 98

then run
/sbin/chkconfig xfs on
/sbin/chkconfig syslog on
/sbin/chkconfig --add gdm-early-login
/sbin/chkconfig --add gdm-allow-login
/sbin/chkconfig gdm-early-login on
/sbin/chkconfig gdm-allow-login on
to regenerate the symlinks in /etc/rc5.d

The last thing that needs to be changed is grub.conf. It should be
modified such that the kernel cmdline has "early-login" in it.

For instance, it might look like this:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1208_FC4 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 quiet
vga=0x317 early-login

[ThijsH]

Thank you !

[CuCullin]

As a side note, another idea would probably be LinuxBIOS. I don't remember what mag, but there was a recent article on very quick boot times using some minor tweaks and LinuxBIOS together. I'll see if I can find the mag tonight (post NYLUG).

[x94scorp]

I will enable this. What if I need to revert back? What do I change these setting to ?

/etc/init.d/xfs to
# chkconfig: 2345 08 97 <-----------

and also change the chkconfig: line in /etc/init.d/syslog to
# chkconfig: 2345 07 98 <-----------

then run
/sbin/chkconfig xfs on <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig syslog on <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig --add gdm-early-login <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig --add gdm-allow-login <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig gdm-early-login on <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig gdm-allow-login on <-----------
to regenerate the symlinks in /etc/rc5.d

[ghaefb]

Originally Posted by x94scorp

I will enable this. What if I need to revert back? What do I change these setting to ?

/etc/init.d/xfs to
# chkconfig: 2345 08 97 <-----------

and also change the chkconfig: line in /etc/init.d/syslog to
# chkconfig: 2345 07 98 <-----------

Simply backup the /etc/init.d/xfs and /etc/init.d/syslog files somewhere, and replace them afterwards...

Originally Posted by x94scorp

then run
/sbin/chkconfig xfs on <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig syslog on <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig --add gdm-early-login <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig --add gdm-allow-login <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig gdm-early-login on <-----------
/sbin/chkconfig gdm-allow-login on <-----------

That would be:

/sbin/chkconfig xfs off
/sbin/chkconfig syslog off
/sbin/chkconfig --del gdm-early-login
/sbin/chkconfig --del gdm-allow-login
/sbin/chkconfig gdm-early-login off
/sbin/chkconfig gdm-allow-login off