CD optimization

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 03:24:22PM +0000, John wrote:

> I was thinking about install speed a little while ago. It's long seemed 
> to me that using debootstrap at install time is flawed: surely just 
> unrolling a tarball is faster?

This is how Debian used to do things before the Woody release, and it was a
maintenance headache.  It certainly was faster, though.

> Also, order of the packages on the CD should be the same as the install
> order. If you don't know what that is, do an HTTP install and view the
> webserver logs.

The packages are copied off of the CD in sorted order, and the packages on
the CD are sorted.  However, there is still quite a bit of unnecessary
seeking in order to read the directories, which are stored on a different
part of the filesystem.  Hence my effort to keep the directory data in
cache, which definitely reduced the seeking, and I expect reduced overall
install time (though I did not measure it).

-- 
 - mdz