10 Ways to Tweak your Linux Boot Process

[Silent~Kid]

Linux rarely needs to be restarted. But when it happens, it is often slow to boot. Fortunately, there are ways to speed up things up. Some of these methods is not very difficult. (Although some unfortunately). Let's take a look.

1.Disable unnecessary services

Depending on the use of the machine, plenty of services will not be necessary. Using Linux just for a desktop? So you do not need sendmail, httpd, and many other services. If your server is only a web server, you can turn off many services. To do this, go to Administration menu and take a look at the Services entry. Just deselect all the services you do not want to start.

2.Disable unnecessary kernel modules

If your computer is wired for Ethernet, you do not have a wireless kernel module loaded. This task is a bit more difficult and will require a kernel recompilation, which is not the easiest task to perform. To do this, you will need the kernel sources. Follow the standard steps to compile a kernel. The difference is that you will go through your system and disable all the modules you do not need.

The best way to find out what kernel modules currently install and run on your system is to install Boot Chart. Not only will this give you a good list of modules, it will illustrate for you what is happening in your system boot. You can also issue the command chkconfig-list | grep 3: on to find out what services are running. When you know what loading modules you do not, you can remove them during a kernel recompilation. While you're at it, compile kernel to exactly match your architecture.

3. Use a lightweight protocol window manager instead of GNOME or KDE

I plug smaller footprint window managers for a reason - they drastically reduce graphical boot time. Instead of having to wait that extra 30 to 60 seconds for GNOME or KDE to boot, why not wait two to 10 seconds for Enlightenment or XFCE to boot up? Not only will they save you boot time, they will save your memory and manage headache bloatware.

4. Use a text-based login instead of a graphical login

Most of my Linux machines boot to run level 3 instead of run level 5, this will stop the text-based login, where I only have to log in and issue startx to start my desktop choice. The graphic logins do two things: increase load times and create headaches trying to recover from an X windows fubar.

5. Use a lighter-weight distribution

Instead of loading Heavyweight Fedora, why not try a Gentoo, Arch, or puppy Linux? Boot times for these smaller distributions are far faster than the more bloated Fedora (and even Ubuntu). Of the larger distributions, openSUSE claims to start the fastest, but I have not personally tested this. Between the latest Fedora and Ubuntu, Ubuntu blows Fedora's boot times away (and it is out of the box).

[Silent~Kid]

6.Use a OpenBIOS

If you are wise enough to upgrade your PC's firmware, you might consider migrating to an open source BIOS. One caveat to using open firmware is that it allows Linux to actually initialize the hardware as it boots (instead of rely on the BIOS). In addition, many open BIOS can be configured to meet your machine's specific needs. If you do not go the open route BIOS, you can at least configure your BIOS to not search for a floppy drive that message does not there or to boot directly to the first hard drive (instead of the CD drive first).

7: Avoid dhcp

If you work on a home network (or a small business network) where the address lease isn'ta problem, go with static IP addresses. This will keep your machine from having to call out to a DHCP server to obtain a IP address. If you use this approach, be sure to configure your / etc / resolve.conf to reflect your DNS server addresses as well.

8: If you can spare it, get rid of hotplug

Hotplug is the system that allows you to connect new devices and use them immediately. If you know your server does not need this system, you must delete it. This will cut down on boot time. In many systems, consumer hotplugging very the boot time. Removing hotplug will vary depending upon the distribution you use. NOTE: udev has, for the most part, replaced hotplug. But if you're running an older distribution, this is true.

9: If you are really daring, you can give initng a sample

The initng system functions as a replacement for the sysvinit system and promises to drastically decrease boot times in UNIX-like operating systems. To see initng system in action, you can give Pingwinek LiveCD a try.

10: Use a hack with Debian

If you use Debian, which is a simple hack you can use to switch your startup scripts to run in parallel. If you look at / etc / init.d / rc script, you will see: Concurrency = none around line 24 change this line for Concurrency = shell and you should see a reduction in boot times.

That is about it. Of course there are always more and better hacks out there. But the above should mostly cover everything. The good news is that you most likely already running Linux, so the burden of boot times is generally facilitated by the few cases of restarts .