Optimizing boot speed of Ubuntu Desktop CD with following methods.

• laying out files by first access(This is Krzysztof Lichota's work. see Kubuntu Dapper live CD optimization)
• running readahead-list on bootup.
• running xserver configuration in the background.
• using directly gconftool-2 instead of casper-reconfigure.

This Desktop CD supports following features.

• non-utc timezone and hwclock with command line options.

  e.g. command line option "tz=Asia/Tokyo utc=no" for Asia/Tokyo timezone and local time hardware clock.

• bootcharting

  generate bootchart if command line option "initrd=/casper/chart.gz" is set.

Download ISO Image

• Experimentally Optimized Ubuntu 6.06.1 Desktop CD (Torrent File)

Experimental Result

• Desktop

  Pentium M 1.8GHz, 1GB RAM

• Laptop

  Pentium M 1.7GHz, 512MB RAM (Dell INSPIRON 710m)

Changes from normal Ubuntu 6.06.1 Desktop CD image

• casper/filesystem.squashfs
  • add bootchart and librsvg2-bin package for bootcharting.
  • laying out files by first access on the edge with the list generated with sort-files-by-first-access.py
  • generate files list for readahead with sort-files-by-first-access-for-readahead.py and put it to /etc/readahead/rofs

    These scripts are based on Krzysztof's script.

• casper/filesystem.readahead

  file list for readahead-list.

• casper/initrd.gz
  • init

    Add parsing "tz" and "utc" command line options.

  • etc/localtime

    symbolic link to /root/etc/localtime

  • usr/share/zoneinfo

    symbolic link to /root/usr/share/zoneinfo/

  • lib/casper/wait_xconfig

    wait for end of xserver configuration

  • scripts/casper-bottom/06readahead_rofs

    kick readahead-list /cdrom/casper/filesystem.readahead if RAM size > 200MBytes

  • scripts/casper-bottom/07timezone

    set timezone and system clock(without doing this here, network interfaces won't acquire ip addresses if timezone > UTC)

  • sbin/hwclock

    kicked in 07timezone

  • scripts/casper-bottom/20xconfig

    run xserver configuration in background

  • scripts/casper-bottom/22gnome_panel_data

    run gconftool-2 instead of casper-reconfigure

  • scripts/casper-bottom/32disable_hibernation

    run gconftool-2 instead of casper-reconfigure

• Remove all files on CD image except essential for live session.