[Arm-netbook] Debian boots in 0.87 seconds

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 3:37 PM, joem <joem at martindale-electric.co.uk> wrote:
> Debian boots in 0.87 seconds:

 ... not quite.  they say it boots to a busybox shell in 0.87 seconds,
and they can *supply* debian wheezy for it.  they most likely boot
direct rather than use u-boot.  or if they use u-boot it's also been
configured to minimal settings.

> http://linuxgizmos.com/headless-arm9-sbc-boots-linux-in-less-than-one-seconds/
> http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7250-V2
>
> Good if this could be force marched to happen EOMA / Allwinner CPU.
>
> A complete world game changer and a lot of funds will get
> released for dormant projects that need fast boot + linux.

 it's doable - it's quite a committment in time and effort which i'd
prefer (personally) to see an advance financial committment matched to
it.

 to get any OS (such as debian) to boot very very fast you need to
make some quite significant modifications.  udev has to go (entirely)
in favour of a static set of /dev/* entries, for example.  the kernel
has to be customised to minimise the number of extra pseudo ttys.
initrd has to go: everything must be in a static monstrously-large
kernel (which itself becomes problematic as that adversely affects
load time).

 so it's a balancing act that has already moved outside of the
mainstream debian (or other OS) infrastructure and purpose, that then
needs maintaining.

 all of which takes time, hence why i would (personally) like to see
some up-front payment before committing time to such an idea.

l.