[Bagger]

Iv just done a minimal hardy install onto a USB stick that boots straight into XBMC

All working dandy, But there's a couple of questions

First is it takes 1 min 20 ish to boot into XBMC about the same as when it was on the hard drive. Is there any thing I can do to speed it up some ?

Second, roughly every couple of minutes,for 5-10 seconds or so some thing accesses the USB stick. you can tell this because the access light keeps flashing. Not a Problem if its reading data, but if its writing data then the memory stick wont last too long.
Any idea`s of what's going on in the background ?

Thanks

[Haggy]

1) I don't know exactly what Ubuntu is loading at bootup, but try to disable everything not absolutely needed. Also make sure you got High-Speed / USB2.0 Support enabled in BIOS and that it is available at bootup.

2) Disable syslog or better create a ramdisk and mount that into locations that get written to (/var/log, ~/.xbmc/temp, /tmp, etc...). Unfortunately there are TONS of possibilities something gets written to disc. Have a closer look at your logs and tail -f them to see what happens in realtime.

[Maxim]

What i've done for some of my flash based installs is to move my initial /var directory to something else in the root, then create a tmpfs on /var when the system boots up it creates the tmpfs, and syncs the data from the var on the file system (I called mine /var.tmp). While the system is up and running it writes everything to the tmpfs, then when I have the machine shutdown there is a script which syncs all the data back to the flash drive. So for any given session there are as few writes as possible for anything written to var.

[Bagger]

Thanks for the info.
I think its caching of some description. Ive just watched a blu-ray over the net work. The activity light was flashing for 10 and off for 2. But if you pause then the activity stops. I would have thought i`d get alot of video stutter if that was being cached to a flash stick .( cant be logging what's it caching ...can it ).

[Maxim]

cant be logging what's it caching ...can it

It can be logging since XBMC logs to /var/tmp, or with the later SVNs logs to ~/.xbmc or something similar. It standardly logs things like starting and pausing of video and if in debug mode displaying of dialog boxes and such.

[Pvt_Ryan]

Do you have access to a different usb stick (different vendor)?

If so try using it instead. I have a 1gb usb stick that r/w speeds from/to are abysmal. I mean it actually hurts to watch. Yet my 1gb/4gb from other vendors are like rocket ships in comparison.

[Bagger]

Do you have access to a different usb stick (different vendor)?

If so try using it instead. I have a 1gb usb stick that r/w speeds from/to are abysmal. I mean it actually hurts to watch. Yet my 1gb/4gb from other vendors are like rocket ships in comparison.

The difference in start-up time between the hard drive and stick are negligible.
I `d just like to get the start-up time down.
There`s nothing I can do till it gets to the grub loader. but there it just sits for a while, then a count down then it waits again before every thing starts loading.
In total it takes approx 80ish seconds from push of the on button till I can select some thing in XBMC

[BLKMGK]

The difference in start-up time between the hard drive and stick are negligible.
I `d just like to get the start-up time down.
There`s nothing I can do till it gets to the grub loader. but there it just sits for a while, then a count down then it waits again before every thing starts loading.
In total it takes approx 80ish seconds from push of the on button till I can select some thing in XBMC

As he said, try a different stick on top of everything else. I have two systems here that boot via USB. One day one of the sticks died and I was forced to switch to another - the difference in speed with this one was stunning. If I were to drag race the two of them - both booting same code BTW - I have little doubt that the one with the newer flash stick would be done a good 15-30 seconds faster than the older one. The difference almost has to be seen to be believed, I can read the text steadily on the old machine, the second one boots so fast I cannot follow it easily. The newer one is a SANDISK Cruzer and it's not the fastest out there either.

At work we've benchmarked some sticks, I wasn't directly involved in the testing but a stick that had "lightning" in the name is our top dog right now, pretty sure it's that Lexar. The only thing I think that has beat it was an SSD built from compact flash sticks that RAIDED them somehow. These can be found on eBay and I think Dean is looking to use one -> http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=309170&postcount=1 I will try to find some additional info on these at work, the ones I'm seeing on eBay right now don't look promising. Our's used more than two CF cards.

Obviously all of the other speedups ought to be done too but don't overlook the difference in speed that some hardware can bring. The guys who speed tested at work showed me the differences between their slowest and fastest sticks - night and day...

[Bagger]

I do understand what you are saying.
But..... the current stick is compared with a hard drive, Not the latest newest but never the less a hard drive, a Maxtor fireball 3 usually capable of 40 MB/s Read and write.
Unless the hard drive is running really slow for some reason then I dont think the boot up speed is to do with the speed of the stick.

Ive ditched the Install on the mem stick for now, and concentrating on speeding up the boot time of the hard drive.
You mention "all of the other speedups". Have you a link to a guide that goes through installing/implementing them ?

Thanks

As he said, try a different stick on top of everything else. I have two systems here that boot via USB. One day one of the sticks died and I was forced to switch to another - the difference in speed with this one was stunning. If I were to drag race the two of them - both booting same code BTW - I have little doubt that the one with the newer flash stick would be done a good 15-30 seconds faster than the older one. The difference almost has to be seen to be believed, I can read the text steadily on the old machine, the second one boots so fast I cannot follow it easily. The newer one is a SANDISK Cruzer and it's not the fastest out there either.

At work we've benchmarked some sticks, I wasn't directly involved in the testing but a stick that had "lightning" in the name is our top dog right now, pretty sure it's that Lexar. The only thing I think that has beat it was an SSD built from compact flash sticks that RAIDED them somehow. These can be found on eBay and I think Dean is looking to use one -> http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=309170&postcount=1 I will try to find some additional info on these at work, the ones I'm seeing on eBay right now don't look promising. Our's used more than two CF cards.

Obviously all of the other speedups ought to be done too but don't overlook the difference in speed that some hardware can bring. The guys who speed tested at work showed me the differences between their slowest and fastest sticks - night and day...

[BLKMGK]

I know that there was a thread here regarding speeding boot times awhile back. It may have been located in the Live section of the forum but I cannot recall. there were links to small Linux distros and to the Ubuntu forums where threads concerning speeding boot were located as I recall. I've not got time to search now but will try later if you've not found it, I'm sure many others are interested in speeding boot as well!

[Turniphead]

From my experience with booting from flash drives, speed is generally associated with hardware but...

I have been using the new jaunty beta for a few days now. It is definitely stable enough to use on my system and boots nearly twice as fast as my old intrepid install.

If you are playing with flash drives it can't hurt to install it on one and see. I have booted it from a 4GB Corsair Flash Voyager which has pretty good r/w speeds. They aren't the cheapest though, but can be worth the money. I was looking into the OCZ dual channel stick, I've heard very good things about them. Again though, they are quite pricey.

[Bagger]

I know that there was a thread here regarding speeding boot times awhile back. It may have been located in the Live section of the forum but I cannot recall. there were links to small Linux distros and to the Ubuntu forums where threads concerning speeding boot were located as I recall. I've not got time to search now but will try later if you've not found it, I'm sure many others are interested in speeding boot as well!

Thanks, Ive found a few threads, and a bit of info, gonna be giving them a try later.
They involve turning off the countdown to the grub loader and the "f" keys to load services.

But I dont think that`ll quite bring it down to 15 seconds one chap was claiming. It`d be nice
I`ll post results later

[Bagger]

Didnt matter what I did, I couldnt get the time down much.

A few bios tweeks lost 4-5 seconds ( big supprise was how much time asus Qfan Takes up )
Turned of the count down for the grub loader lost another 3 seconds.

transfered the install to a faster hard drive which helped lose another 10 seconds.

But its still Taking nearly 55 seconds.

So I ditched this current install, and installed XBMC Live which is pretty quick @ just over 40 seconds. Almost happy with that....almost
But my main problem now is Ive lost the remote functions.

irw comes up connection refused
I tried dpkg-reconfigure lirc but that errors.

removed and re installed lirc, that errors too.

Help...