On patching usplash, boot times and Live CD

[Frank Schoep]

Hello everyone,

I'm going to address the last few issues I had left unanswered, it's going to 
be quite a story again.

First of all, I patched usplash this morning. The change is exactly what I 
proposed yesterday: only showing failure messages and their appropriate 
descriptions. The patch is very small and works for all usplash themes once 
installed.  Apply it on usplash.c, there's also a contextual 3 diff:
http://www.ffnn.nl/media/external/ubuntu/usplash/usplash-cut-verbosity.patch
http://www.ffnn.nl/media/external/ubuntu/usplash/usplash.c-c3.diff

I've compiled a binary which can be dropped into /sbin [1]:
http://www.ffnn.nl/media/external/ubuntu/usplash/usplash

After copying it there, chmod 755 it and run: "sudo dpkg-reconfigure 
linux-image-$(uname -r)". After that, your usplash will only show error 
messages and definitely boot faster.

You probably heard me talking about decreasing boot time in the past by 
cutting usplash verbosity. I know you all love numbers, so take the following 
data into consideration, I've collected these numbers after completing the 
usplash patch:

Real machine, normal boot: 21.4 seconds
Real machine, textless boot: 18.7 seconds
Savings: 2.7 seconds, 13% of boottime

VMware, normal boot: 38.7 seconds
VMware, textless boot: 21.7 seconds
Savings: 17 seconds, 44% of boottime

The amount of seconds indicates the time spent displaying usplash. I haven't 
changed anything besides the usplash binary and kernel init image. My 
machine's pretty fast overall so I suppose boot time will decrease even more 
for slower computers. Think of the time we save by optimizing this for all 
installations [2].

Next up: the Live CD. I'll tell you what my experience with it is. I used 
Flight 7 which seemed to be the most recent one.

I inserted the CD and booted from it. I sat in my chair, not touching anything 
for about two minutes after which the Ubuntu desktop came up. Do I have a 
mystical machine from the gods which does not require usplash user 
interaction for the Live CD? I also didn't see any screen elements that 
necessarily required a black background, but maybe I've overlooked it.

On shutdown, no interaction was required again on my mystical machine. The 
only thing was a message telling me to remove the CD. I've got a solution for 
that: write the text just like now, only append a "FAILURE !" usplash_write 
behind it, so they will be shown on a textless usplash and the exclamation 
marks will only emphasize the call for attention.

It's probably not the most elegant solution behind the scenes, but textless 
boot and shutdown more than make up for this I think.

Thanks again for your time. I think I've now cleared my list regarding usplash 
and provided all code and artwork necessary to get it in. What happens now is 
beyond my control.

With kind regards,

Frank Schoep


[1] - I know. You don't have to do this, but you have my written word nothing 
goes wrong.
[2] - Ars Technica, The Big Picture (first paragraph): 
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/macosx-pb1/macos-x-beta-16.html