@ roberts: I think in my case, a PPI would be the perfect setting: I use 2 (and only 2) extensions (with all its dependencies) on every boot: alsa and vlc, which have to be mounted every time I boot TC (about 4 - 5 times a day, every day). My booting time takes about 45 seconds. I have tried booting without those extensions (faster) and then mounting them (which takes some time, so the total time until the system is up and ready is roughly the same. In this scenario, having these two extensions already mounted in PPI wouldn't give me a faster start?
With a PPI they wouldn't be mounted but actually installed to a persistent store.
Here's one way to do such:
1. Using system menu use PPISetup to create a tclocal file or directory on a partition.
2. Reboot using options
base norestore local=sdb2 (Use actual partition from step 1.
3. Next use Control Panel->Apps Audit->Install Options->Toggle Default Copy Install
4. Use appbrowser's
Install option to copy install only PPI compatible extensions.
5. Reboot using the local=xxxx option as above.
* Always need to boot with local=xxx so add such to your boot loader. There is no autodetection for tclocal.
* The above method assumes you have enough memory. If you have low memory then you must use a tce directory structure temporarily. Still use local=xxx boot option, set Copy Install flag from Apps Audit, select only PPI and use appbrowser Install option. After installing then remove the entire tce directory and reboot with only local=xxx.
* Note that no further Apps Audit functionality will work.
* When you want to upgrade apps installed into tclocal you must clear/remove tclocal and start anew.
* Note too that you may setup a combination tclocal and tce mount system. This is a toolkit and your free to setup as you deem necessary. Anything installed into tclocal should be removed from any tce directory.
With PPI you can achieve a faster booting system at the expense of using auditing and upgrading tools.