faster boot?

[papaschtroumpf]

What can be done under linux to make it boot faster?

I'm running linux w/ KDE on a laptop (at this time I'm running Mepis, but that's not really relevant), so the old argument of "you don't need to reboot often so who cares?" is moot.

 

I have some ideas of my own but I'm not sure how to implement them:

 

- how do you stop looking for new hardware (it's a laptop, it's unlikely to change)?

 

- how do you tell X to use a specific resolution at start rather than "scan" and determine every time which resolution appears to be the right one to use.

 

- can some services be started after the computer has booted? for example does the NTP daemon have to start at boot or could it start later? (wireless using ndiswrapper/wpa_supplicant doesn't seem to be operational at the time NTP tries to start so it times out and fails).

 

- other ideas?

[arctic]

First of all, disable all unneeded services. Most users have more systems up and running than they need. For hardware stuff, the service to disable should be kudzu. Then, you can increase the performance by using a self-compiled kernel but you have to decide for yourself if this is really necessary/worth the effort.

Don't know exaclty about the other stuff. I guess you need to create some scripts for that.

[jboy]

- can some services be started after the computer has booted?

You bet.

 

/sbin/chkconfig --list shows you which services are are on/off at boot by run level.

 

To start a service not started automatically at boot, e.g., bluetooth:

 

As root,

 

service bluetooth start

 

alternately,

 

/etc/init.d/bluetooth start

 

Other parameters would typically include stop, restart, status, etc. The parameters and the actions they take are specified in the script that's in /etc/init.d for that service.

 

You could also check parameters with the --help parameter:

 

# /etc/init.d/bluetooth --help

Usage: /etc/init.d/bluetooth {start|stop|status|restart|reload|condrestart}

 

or alternately,

 

# service bluetooth --help

Usage: /etc/init.d/bluetooth {start|stop|status|restart|reload|condrestart}