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Embedded Linux Achieves One-Second Boot Time
Sam writes "A new goalpost has been set in the race for faster bootup times. MontaVista Software announced (and demonstrated at the Virtual Freescale Technology Forum) a dashboard application going from cold boot to operational in one second flat on their embedded Linux platform. Although this is unlikely to immediately benefit your average Linux user, previous real-time patches have eventually made their way into the main kernel."
That site should just switch to white text. It's like everyone keeps going a shade lighter. Apparently they are racist and have something against black.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
This is such a step forward for Linux! Now that they have it working, the coders can optimize it and backport it to other platforms! This is just the beginning of something amazing for Open Source. I'll try to integrate the changes on my quad core C2D--it takes 29 seconds to boot right now. GO LINX!!!
I can post before I log in.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I'm surprised that this is news. I remember working a few years ago on booting Linux (also the MontaVista version) in 600 million cycles flat, which for a CPU running at 600 MHz, is exactly one second as well.
You can even still: watch a video of this here
Impressive and would be a huge improvement over the current state of things.
But then again, my 1Mhz Apple ][ could cold boot in just a couple seconds.Of course, loading Applesoft Basic from tape took an additional two minutes but Integer Basic was in the ROM.
Michael Abrash wrote a great article about this in Dr. Dobbs magazine in the 90s. His young daughter (5 years old?) asked him why he never used his "fast" computer. Abrash was using a state-of-the-art 266mhz DX2 powerhouse and couldn't figure out what she meant. She was referring to the old Vic-20 in the corner that would boot in just a few seconds. Windows 3.0 took several minutes to load. IIRC, the article was titled "perception is everything"
Though the fact that this is an embedded device with, most likely, a REALLY stripped down version of Linux is kind of cheating a bit.
Linux has insane uptime. I can usually keep my box on indefinitely. I'll only turn it off when I accidentally pull out the cord when I'm reaching behind my desk or when I blow a fuse by running the microwave, toaster, and dishwasher at the same time. Why have such a quick boot time when you hardly need to boot in the first place?
Okay, I haven't been using desktop Linux on a day to day basis since around 2003; but even then, sleeping and hibernating worked reasonably well - so I didn't reboot all that often. On my Mac, the only time I reboot is when an update forces me to. So (serious question) why is faster boot times all that important? I wouldn't think devices w/ embedded Linux would shut down regularly, but maybe I'm wrong...
#DeleteChrome
Or the 90's - My Amiga 1200 booted into workbench in about 3 seconds .
Give me a call when they can go from off to Google in less than 1 second. (OS boot, wireless initialization, browser start, google reply). Shoot, I would be impressed with 10 seconds.
The video was hard to find on the given links. One of them even had the audacity to ask me to log in to view it. Yeah, as if.
One Second Linux Boot Demonstration (new version)
Also, kudos on the music choice. The wah-wah pedal in the opening music really gives the tech demo that "porn soundtrack" feel I know you were going for.
coding is life
Poor attempt at trolling. Get your facts straight at least.
Well, Moblin, who boots the fastest, NOW?
Does anyone reading /. even remember the last time they booted their workstation? I would definitely have to check my uptime and do the math to know.
Having said that, this would be great for things like laptops, netbooks, pdas, etc. Things that run from battery most of the time... might decrease battery usage thus increasing actual usage time.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
If XP is supposed to be how power management is done, I will pass.
It's faster to just reboot the box into Linux.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
At the time, I bragged 4 seconds (real application running) was the industry fastest with out gizmo, Blabbermouth
What I want to see is 0seconds using Flash. eg. run out of flash and just stop the clock! Then resume it. That has to work, right?
I fly a *lot* and I haven't had to do that in a very long time (it's in suspend all the time just in case).
I don't know about everyone else, but my Kubuntu installation suspends/sleeps perfectly. The Windows 7 RC installation on the other hand... Yeah, yeah; something about anecdotes meaning nothing in the grand scheme of things.
i want to see what the kernel .config and rc.xxx files that load at boot time look like
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I'm working as an embedded driver software engineer and setup our company's OpenEmbedded build system to provide an end-to-end build environment for our embedded offering and while I can't find the link at the moment -- the one second boot time has been done before and was posted on TI's OMAP developer site a while ago. If I remember correctly it's mostly about U-Boot and how it copies the kernel into memory (byte by byte as opposed to streaming it) which is where you get the majority of your time decrease.
Either way, MontaVista is not the first on this one and it's a shame they're pretending they are.
The one second boot time is also never going to benefit regular PCs as they achieve it due to the nature of embedded systems -- you build a distro for your specific hardware which means no probing, none of that BIOS junk. No looking for the 'first' boot device.. U-Boot can be configured to automatically jump to the booting phase so you're already faster there. Beyond that, load and decompress your kernel (it'd be faster if your kernel wasn't compressed too wouldn't it?)..
So, chalk this up to having a kernel built specifically for your hardware and a boot-loader that is set to only boot one way, ever.
Found it.
Originally posted by 'Mohanky' June 2008:
http://wiki.davincidsp.com/index.php/All_This_For_1_Second_Boot
I just curious what's in my Canon camera. It also boots in a very short time.
I fly a *lot* and I haven't had to do that in a very long time (it's in suspend all the time just in case).
I flew with 4 co-workers last week, and 3 of us had to boot our laptops. All had our laptops and/or laptop cases swabbed.
One of us had to take off his shoes and socks, and submit to having the waistband of his pants searched by hand.
I love the theater...
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
I make sure and wear no underwear when I go to the airport. If they're going to search my pants, i'm at the very least going to give them a good show.
Dirty, on ice (or, in bed) with his girl (or, with his male) would he be a quickshot from cold to boot-topping? (Yeh, i realize this is a ... heady topic...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Too expensive to drive (out of the corner)? (Perception is EVERYthing, hehehehe...)...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I only RECENTLY (as in, say after Dec 2008) began to enjoy fully functional suspend to RAM on my laptop, partly IIRC, with PCLOS, and then Mandriva 2009.0 and currently with 2009.1. However, if i yank the USB broadband device out, I get streams of IOCTL and other errors, KPPP, and pppd won't die, even when as root i try to kill them, and reinserting the device doesn't satisfy it. On suspend attempts, i get to the BLACK display, then the backlight resumes, then i get "Resuming tasks". I end up having to reboot.
Point? If some devices hose up the system, rebooting will be necessary, so instant on is (for some here, but not necessarily me, hehehe) better than sex. Sex is ZERO, but rebooting in near-zero is nervvv..hahahaahh...nah....
It would be nice if the mobo's contained chips that would allow the owners to load their OS of choice into, and then powering on is just a split second of waiting. It would be nice if Runlevel 1 actually purged 100% of any hosed up /dev connections and a full reboot weren't necessary. But, it's nice to have my laptop behave for 28 or 29 days without rebooting. I don't need 6 months or a year -- I'm not THAT demanding.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
CoreBoot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) will boot a full Linux kernel on a general-purpose machine in 3 seconds.
Except one can't easily install coreboot on a random PC because as I understand it, most motherboard makers have declined to cooperate. Therefore, any machine to run coreboot would need to be purpose built. So if a machine is advertised as compatible with coreboot, is it really "general-purpose"?
Give me a call when they can go from off to Google in less than 1 second. (OS boot, wireless initialization, browser start, google reply).
That would depend on two things: 1. how fast you can type in the passphrase to unlock the keyring that holds your WEP/WPA/WPA2 keys, and 2. how fast your router (whose operating system you usually do not control) responds.
U-Boot in most of the platforms I dealt with for ARM never bothered to: enable the MMU, and therefore the d-cache was never enabled. This fix was quite easy, although I never bothered to send a patch upstream. I guess using the d-cache works like a type of streaming.
decompress your kernel (it'd be faster if your kernel wasn't compressed too wouldn't it?)..
Depends on the kernel and the memory technology really. In the case of NOR flash, even Intel's synchronous Strataflash, it was almost always faster to decompress and boot on most builds. I wrote a hand tuned LZO decompressor for ARM a while back for this very purpose.
All you have to do to gain the same benefits on your PC (besides throw away the BIOS and replace it with Coreboot) is compile the kernel for your system. There's no reason this can't be done on every system. Gentoo has proved that. Everyone compiles kernel modules on-demand these days... might as well recompile the kernel.
Now, if only kexec would work on more platforms... or for that matter, work reliably on x86.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
'real time' patches have nothing to do with boot time.
Real time is after the machine has booted.
If someone doesn't know anything about a subject, but
is a marketting person, they can still publish an article here.
I've recently become interested in this area myself, so I was surprised to see an article on fast booting. I was hoping the comments would by chance happen to answer some of the questions I have regarding the topic, but they have not, so my next best bet is to ask. I know plenty of you will say that fast booting is not important. I'll admit do care a little bit about boot times, but I'm mainly interested from an academic point of view and am using this to try to learn a little more about how Linux works.
I'd like to put together a very fast booting Linux system, composed of just the bare minimum needed to be able to run something like BusyBox. I've googled this topic and have found things like Linux From Scratch, but as far as I can tell these seem to have their own software on which you base whatever you're building. I was under the impression that all you need to boot is a file system, the Linux kernel, an initrd and then userland software for whatever you want to run. I've read that initrd isn't even needed if you compile SATA drivers into the kernel and maybe some other things. In fact I would say that another aim is to boot without using initrd at all, I only intend to use this on my computer for a bit of fun.
Are there any websites that contain a minimal list of things required to get Linux to boot? I could be horribly wrong on a lot of this, in which case I look forward to being corrected.
According to the manufacturer, http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7800 boots to Linux in 0.69 second. It's a 500MHz ARM-9 based system. I haven't used this board, but I've used others from the same manufacturer; the Linux they provide is Debian-based on the boards I've used.
This is great but I also want a completely power-loss tolerant file system that doesn't need any fscking on restart. If I'm building a true Linux-based appliance, not a general purpose computer, laptop or netbook, basic criteria would be fast boot and the ability to turn it off by disconnecting the power without telling it to shut down gracefully. Basic toggle switch control and no fancy hardware to keep power available while it's shutting down. This would be battery powered and an end-user should be able to pull the batteries and put in new ones without ill effects.
It wasn't clear whether that included just the kernel? or kernel + GUI application like MontaVista is claiming here on the YouTube vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l_DSZe8_F8
...the marketspeak made my ears bleed. The word "kernel" was mentioned *once* in the article linked to by the second link.