How fast your linux boots, really depends on your distro and of course it’s their job to have it boot as fast as possible. They try as much as possible scenarios and make sane decisions on where to optimize. But they can’t test every possible configuration, so what if you just end up with a suboptimal situation (possibly without realizing? :)). Even if you know your boot takes too much time, how would you locate the culprit(s)?
This is where Bootchart jumps in. Bootchart is a tool which makes it possible assess resource consumption throughout boot time. It is really simple to set up, just add a kernel param! Data is collected in memory using tmpfs and dumped to disk at the end of the boot process. This data then gets processed by a java app which outputs an SVG/PNG.
It seems the opensuse guys, actually coolo, used this tool to optimize boot performance for opensuse 10.3. I must say I am quite satisfied with my opensuse boot times although I do have the impression that 11.0 seems to be a tad slower than 10.3. So I’m definitely going to try out this tool and compare the results 🙂
Thanks to my brother for the tip.
Part 2
Accidentally, a few hours after writing this post, I ran into this very interesting article about boot speedups presented at the Linux Plumbers Conference last month. (Watch a modified fedora boot in 5 secs on an eeePC)