[gentoo-user] Re: On what to base a custom live CD?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-11-25, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@×××××.com> wrote:
> On 2010-11-25, Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk> wrote:
>> On Wed, 24 Nov 2010 22:02:10 +0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote:
>>
>>> I thought about using a customized systemrescuecd, but that takes ages
>>> to boot (almost 5 minutes).  This CD is intended as something a
>>> customer can run to do a quick hardware test, and making them sit
>>> there for 5 minutes to see a 5-second test just isn't going to fly.
>>
>> It it actually booting all that time, or is it waiting for user input? I
>> doesn't take anything like that long to boot on my netbook, but I have
>> modified the USB install to set a keymap choice and a couple of other
>> options.
>
> AFAICT, it's booting that whole time.  I picked the initial isolinux
> menu entry that selects the US keymap, so there is no user input until
> it gets to the bash prompt.  That time is booting on a qemu VM (but so
> is the ~10 seconds for the other CD I'm comparing to).

FWIW, most of the "slowness" of the systemrescuecd was due to lzma
decompression of both the kernel and the initrd image.  I switched to
gzip, and that cut the boot time to about 25% of what it was.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! When you get your
                                  at               PH.D. will you get able to
                              gmail.com            work at BURGER KING?