boot timings

[pgf at laptop.org]

bert wrote:
 > Am 27.06.2008 um 21:55 schrieb pgf at laptop.org:
 > 
 > > hello --
 > >  
 > > yesterday, as much for an exercise in using the serial port,
 > > manipulating the kernel commandline, and doing a little
 > > exploring, i resurrected an old tool of mine which timestamps
 > > lines received over a serial port (or a socket), and i used it to
 > > get a trace of XO startup and shutdown.
 > 
 > Nice! Thanks.
 > 
 > So hardware-wise, USB and the touchpad seem to be time hogs, but it
 > seems unlikely we can do anything about that.

the only suspicious USB-related thing that i noticed was the 1.6
seconds in the firmware, apparently to discover the wireless.  in
the normal boot case i wouldn't think we'd need this, but perhaps
in the truly normal case (no dev key) we don't do it.  i didn't
re-run the test with no dev key.

 > On the software-side, sshd takes close to 3 secs to start, would make
 > sense to disable in user builds - without a password it is not useful
 > anyway.

right.  this is exactly the kind of thing this tool is good for spotting.

just as scott wants to put a stake in the ground about not letting the
next release get bigger, i think it would also be worth not letting it
get slower.  

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org