Skip floppy detection at boot?

[maro]

I'm using 3.4.1, so I think that change doesn't skip loading the floppy module.

Correct, as the observed delay of 3 sec appears during the kernel boot phase and Robert's change was done AFAIK in '/usr/bin/mountables.sh' (a helper script for the Mount Tool if I'm not mistaken).

[jerramy]

kernel parameter "floppy=0,irq" did the trick. 

Thank you very much!

[tinypoodle]

Oh freaking heck, it's just a feel-good "Look how fast my system boots!" measure. 

Heh, ok, to each their own... 

Personally I would rather adapt the more conventional/traditional Linux users approach of feel-good "Look how rarely my system needs to boot" and therefore put priority of stability over boot time.
After all 'uptime' is a most basic command to check with one glimpse - and its output directly comparable   

[tinypoodle]

kernel parameter "floppy=0,irq" did the trick. 

Thank you very much!

Really curious now if you could us provide us with a comparison of total boot time in each case.  

[jerramy]

I personally don't like to leave my compters on when I'm not using them.  My Windows machine often gets left on, simply because it's a drag waiting for it to boot (a couple minutes), though that's nothing compared to my computer at work, which I NEVER turn off, because it can take 15 minutes...

My last kernel message has a timestamp of 5.4 seconds.  It takes about a second each to get through BIOS and bootloader. The rest of the time probably gets taken up with loading the kernel from disk, and starting various vital extensions (wireless drivers, xvesa, flwm, ...)

In total, it's about 12 seconds from pushing the ON button to looking at flwm.

[curaga]

It's somewhat funny how this can too be blamed on the bios writers

Nobody on the team has reported this, probably because all our hw either has a floppy drive or has a proper bios that doesn't poll when the floppy drive is set to none.

[danielibarnes]

Really curious now if you could us provide us with a comparison of total boot time in each case.

My results are similar (about 20% savings):
BEFORE
[    3.902644] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
[    6.913368] floppy0: no floppy controllers found
[   15.701130] EXT4-fs (loop0): mounted filesystem without journal

AFTER
[    3.172265] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
[    3.172374] floppy0: Unable to grab IRQ0 for the floppy driver
[   11.994172] EXT4-fs (loop0): mounted filesystem without journal

[tinypoodle]

I personally don't like to leave my compters on when I'm not using them.

Have you considered suspend?

In total, it's about 12 seconds from pushing the ON button to looking at flwm.

Is that with floppy disabled by boot param or without?
How much is the value in the other case?

[tinypoodle]

Really curious now if you could us provide us with a comparison of total boot time in each case.

My results are similar (about 20% savings):
BEFORE
[    3.902644] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
[    6.913368] floppy0: no floppy controllers found
[   15.701130] EXT4-fs (loop0): mounted filesystem without journal

AFTER
[    3.172265] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
[    3.172374] floppy0: Unable to grab IRQ0 for the floppy driver
[   11.994172] EXT4-fs (loop0): mounted filesystem without journal

Not exactly what I meant by total boottime, but time until desktop has finished fully loading.
e.g. there could be a possibility that floppy probing would directly delay the mounting of that loop without excluding that other processes are running in parallel.

[jerramy]

Is suspend easy to get working with TCL?  It was pretty hit and miss with Windows.

It was 3 seconds longer with the floppy check, so I would guess about 15 seconds.  I'm also using several flags that help speed it along:
noicons  (though I don't think this matters for me)
noswap  (that helps a bit, not having to mount swap)
nodhcp  (though this gets done for my wifi in bootlocal.sh
noutc (probably no gain)
embed (doesn't have to move files, I'm guessing?)
nozswap (this was taking some time)

I also am using microcore, and converted Xvesa, Xlibs, Xprogs, and flwm_topside to .tcz's instead of .tg'z, which I think saves me a few milliseconds.

I'm only assuming it was 3 seconds longer until desktop.  I'd have to check again to make sure.

[tinypoodle]

It's somewhat funny how this can too be blamed on the bios writers

Nobody on the team has reported this, probably because all our hw either has a floppy drive or has a proper bios that doesn't poll when the floppy drive is set to none.

I happen to have a laptop with a broken floppy drive which results in a delay during POST but not during OS boot.