[Debian-eeepc-devel] Please test readahead-fedora, for a faster boot

[Raphael Geissert]

Hi,

A couple of days ago readahead-fedora made its way into the archive.
Note that this implementation is *not* based on the 'readahead' package.

The package description lists some of the differences between the two
readahead implementations currently in the archive.

In general you should get a faster boot with readahead-fedora. If you don't,
please let me know!

But beware: bootchart may say readahead-fedora made the boot take longer,
but this happens because readahead-fedora also preloads some files that are
used right after booting (kdm/gdm/xdm, etc) which improves the to-login
time.

To get started:
1. apt-get install readahead-fedora
2. reboot and pass the "profile" boot option (just like you were used to
when you used readahead).
3. Following boots should be faster.

Now some more notes:
* If you have readahead installed make sure you disable it before you start
using readahead-fedora. Having both running won't help at all :)
* Read /usr/share/doc/readahead-fedora/README
* You can tweak readahead-fedora via /etc/default/readahead-fedora
and /etc/readahead.conf (the latter should not need any tweaking, though)
* If you have the preload daemon installed readahead-fedora should play more
or less nice with it.
* If you want to benchmark the boot process with a standard bootchart (i.e.
one that stops after rc2.d) you should set /etc/default/readahead-fedora's
READAHEAD_EXTRA_COLLECT to 0 and re-profile.
* Yes, the readahead process (of the -fedora package) might take longer than
its counterpart of the readahead package, but the overall boot process
should be faster.
* readahead-fedora supports /usr and /var as separate partitions, but the
performance might not, yet, be the best as it could get.
* If you are not using Debian's standard kernels make sure you built it with
CONFIG_AUDIT=y, otherwise the collector won't work.
* If you are running testing you might need to rebuild the package due to a
library transition in sid.

By the way, it is strongly recommended that you install and enable insserv
(if you are using current sid it is already installed and enabled).

I will later come up with some extra tools and recommendations.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphael Geissert - Debian Developer
www.debian.org - get.debian.net