I think the best boot time is a minimal initramfs with minimal rootfs.xz not copied to the ram and using aufs as rootfs.xz as ro layer. rootfs.xz minimal just enough to get X working and once booted you can merge layers...mount -o remount,add:/mounted/file.sqf (squashfs file with compressor gz,lzma or xz whichever is possible). That way we can mount any squashfs file over the network and merge/layer to our current root filesystem..
2010/12/30 Philippe Lelédy
<slitaz@xxxxxxxxx>
It's time to draw the bottom-line.
I built my SliTaz as flavor, under my own built Slitaz flavor, with, I think, last tools and packages. Important point: it has squasfs+xz.
My system unpacked is about 422M.
Iso sizes are:
ram-xz: 93.0M , ram-gz: 176.0M, loram-ram-sqfs.xz : 146.0M,
loram-smallcdrom-sqfs.xz: 146.0M.
Boot times on 2 computers: Dell Intel Core Duo with 512M RAM and Mac Mini Intel Core Duo with 2G RAM
ram: roofs.gz *is* the initramfs, so it is loaded in RAM by the bootloader and unpacked by Linux kernel. No SliTaz specific stuff is involved in this process.
ram-xz: Dell: not enough RAM, Mac: too much RAM makes kernel crash while unpacking roofs.gz
ram-gz: Dell: not enough RAM, Mac: 1min 30s the boot loader is very slow at loading big initramfs
loram-ram: (roofs.gz is *part* of initramfs, so it is loaded in RAM by the bootloader, but it remains unpacked, and is used as aufs ro base layer)
Dell: 28s, Mac: 1min 25s same remark
loram-smallcdrom-ram:( roofs.gz is copied in RAM by init at initramfs time)
Dell: 25s, Mac: 30s
loram-smallcdrom-cdrom ( i.e. roofs.gz not copied in RAM )
Dell: 23s, Mac 27s
I will standardize on loram-smallcdrom-ram and will hope there will be enough RAM on any computer it will be used. That's because if SliTaz has nice provisions for making the choice between loram-smallcdrom-ram and loram-smallcdrom-cdrom after RAM available at boot time, the tests I made showed some cases where it doesn't work very well, and I have no more time to investigate this issue,... my students are coming soon.
Ph.L.
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