Hi TomyTurbos
... I am looking for a 'for dummies' method to reduce boot time while still including the necessary drivers. ...
Attached is a script that will match currently loaded modules to the locations they can be found in. After downloading, make
it executable like this:
chmod 774 FindModules.sh
Here is a sample run. The names next to the asterisks are the module names as they appear from the lsmod command. The
next line is where in the file system the module can be found.
~snip~
Thanks, Rich. Your prompt attention shows that you truly deserve the 'Hero Member' Title!
As it turns out, what I was really asking about was onboot.lst and auditing it to exclude items (particularly drivers) which are not germane to my hardware.
Bear in mind that in this case I am making a proprietary system, portability is not a concern.
What I say next is probably a 'Suggestion Box' item, but I'm putting it here because we're already on the topic.
So, after studying up on the way TC (and specifically Core+) is structured, I find the following:
The TCE (or CDE) has the same contents 'as-shipped'. The difference in booting starts first with the selection of window manager. Farther down the boot menu there are less-robust 'installs' and this is done via the 'lst=xxx.lst' boot code. (I realize that most of you already knew this. I'm being verbose for the sake of any other newbs who may stumble upon this thread in search of an answer.)
So the first thing was that since i already know which window manager I want, there is no reason to load the others, yet all of them are loaded as 'onboot' items.
I copied onboot.lst to a separate filename and deleted the unnecessary desktops. All is well in that regard.
This led to drivers, which are possibly needed, but after the fact have nothing to do with my hardware. The problem (which is the reason why I started this thread) is that it is no small task to determine which ones to weed out.
I managed to get a list of the ones in use by using 'Control Panel>System Stats>Installed' and was able to (somewhat awkwardly) c&p these to a text file. Unfortunately, System Stats sorts these alphabetically, where onboot.lst is in sequential order of loading.
First suggestion: Add an 'export' or 'dump' feature to System Stats.
From this I was able to derive that there are two broadcom drivers loading on boot which have no reason to exist. (Ironically enough, the one that I DO need (b43) isn't in the packaged version's TCE, but that was resolved separately).
So, I deleted these and the unneeded/unwanted window managers from my customized .lst file. All is well and I shaved whatever the load time for these is off my boot-up.
I will have to further audit my custom .lst against the 'installed' list I took from System Stats, but it is an arduous task in part because one is alphabetized and the other CAN'T be alphabetized. As well, the 'maintenance' function of App Browser really brings no joy because it doesn't look at the output of System Stats>Installed when you say 'clean up onboot'.
This all seems to be rather simple to resolve, but other than thinking it up I am way beyond my pay grade. Otherwise I'd offer to do it myself.
I am marking the topic as solved but still look forward to any further developments.