Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

guys any possibilities of faster booting process of nokia n900? like eg without boot video. or some patches that could make faster booting. i mean the process of booting is veryy veryy slow plz give any solutions.

im using kp50 950 overclocked
cssu t

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

you can try removing lots of things from your N900. Boot video is so trivial I'll not comment on that.

there are many programs/services that are started when booting. If you don't need them you can uninstall them (camera-ui, nokiamessaging, calendar, etc.)

make a list of what you don't need and we/I may take it from there :)

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

if i uninstalled camera-ui then i think i cant use camera right? im noob please help

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

@seanmcken
No it wont :)
come on man ! you are booting maemo 5 on N900 :P
and what is the good thing by speeding up booting ? (if it is possible ) unless you are rebooting every 5 minutes :-D

/sifo

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

well i like this phone i mean mobile computer very much but i hate this booting process. its like PC booting up

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

This is the keyword :)

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Reboot? My uptime is upwards of two weeks and counting

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

that is because IT IS PC booting up

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

If you use nitdroid everyday you'll do some what rebooting a day, then it might come in handy with a snappy boot process. (e.g. If you need to boot back to maemo to make a call you missed when booted into nitdroid as the voice call isn't working yet).

Regards Dousan...

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Minimize the number of widgets and stuff, that need to be loaded for your desktop(s).

To remove the nokia hands animation at all, do

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

r u sure? this will help?

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

@seanmcken,

The N900 does not do actively anything to artificially slow-down the boot process (I think that's pretty obvious, but anyway).

Meaning: if you want to make the booting faster, then you need to stop the N900 from loading something. Meaning you have to uninstall that something.

I gave you a few examples (camera-ui, nokiamessaging, calendar). Obviously removing those programs will remove that functionality as well, so it's up to you to decide what's important and what's not.

If you want to experiment for yourself (have the flasher and USB cable at hand though), have a look at the directory /etc/event.d.

There you have the scripts that load/do stuff during booting. Have a look at the stuff there and see if there's something you might not need.

You also have the /etc/Xsession.d directory. The scripts there are run once X is running.

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Not strictly true. Playing the welcome video is (what I would call) an obvious example of artificially slowing down the boot process.
But I understand what you mean and I agree :)

I've played around in /etc/event.d and yes, managed to make my N900 unbootable at one point but I also managed to rescue it by launching the console from BootMenu. Just throwing it in as an alternative to a flasher + USB cable.

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Thanks for the addition. Depending on the question (and the OP) it may be best to limit the available choices...

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

sudo gainroot
apt-get purge hildon-welcome hildon-welcome-default-logo

its better than tweaking anything cuz it helped me for faster booting

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

apt-get remove hildon-startup-progress

To remove 5 dots startup animation, should save a few cycles.

Or perhaps edit /etc/pmconfig and set smartreflex to 0 and max cpu speed to 1GHz.

This means it will run at 1 GHz till kernel-config kicks in, this might shave some seconds off...or you might just get a bootloop.

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

hmm its like impossible to remove thise dots i guess. and i hate that even though doing that apt-get purge...... its still go on showing that dots.

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

I remember there was some guy who made a whole analysis about what can be removed, can't seem to find that thread again. Or was it you, Reinob?

Like the idea I can remove the useless video I never watch, even if I replaced it with a better one :P

BTW: Xsession.post is a bit safer than Xsession.d. Thanks vi_, works even better than event.d

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

wow wow i never did anything good here

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

I completely removed the dots in my "dev-N900" and in my "spare-N900" as well. But I've never documented anything I've done so far.

Looking at the dpkg list, there is nothing with "welcome" on it (although this is already known).

With "startup" I have:
hildon-initscripts
maemo-launcher
osso-af-startup
osso-startup-wizard[*]

As long as you don't touch any of the above, you can remove anything that has the word startup in it, most importanly: hildon-startup-progress
[*] Add.: funny. I just checked in my "normal-N900" and there I removed hildon-startup-progress *and* osso-startup-wizard (that's the one asking for regional settings and time when you take the battery out for too long). I therefore declare this operation to be safe :)

DISCLAIMER: I don't have the .deb with me at the moment, so I cannot look at preinstall, postinstall, etc. so I *may* have done something besides just apt-get purge'ing it.

But I really don't think so, so feel free to purge it.

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Link to this thread please!

Also what is osso-af-startup?

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

@reinob
im sorry buddy i dint underestand can u plz plz make a guide (noob guide)? plz?

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Do your read? I said I can't find that thread again :( But I remember it anymore. Will look at my bookmarks when I'm home, might have saved it....

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

ok buddy thank u very much in advance

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

At least I discussed it around here: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=126 (recovery console thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=72726&page=4).

In /etc/event.d you have to remove, if present:
hildon-startup-progress (runs when X is running)
progress (runs before X runs, using framebuffer)

In /etc/Xsession.d you have to remove, if present:
01xprogress

and in /etc/Xsession.post you remove, if present:
22xprogress-stop

That should get rid of the dots for good (at least *I* don't see them, ever).

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

It contains many startup scripts which are run at boot (called from scripts in /etc/init.d) -- the whole boot process is a mess --

As an example, it contains the script that asks for the lock code if you've set one as well as stuff that is done during the first boot.

I hope some day I can really document the whole startup mess in Maemo5. But I still need to read the upstart source code, as many things happen even if you wouldn't expect them to happen. Why, oh why, does Maemo use upstart? it's a (small) piece of *fixed* hardware. We just need a linear boot script that does *every-fvcking-thing* depending on the runlevel (normal, actdead, reboot, shutdown).

But no, "modern" Linux has to over-complicate everything for the sake of enlarging the egos of incompetent programmers (read: freedesktop, gnome, ubuntu, debian, etc.)

There, I said it!

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

It might be allready written but if you want to remove the original boot video (or want to place your custom one) there is super user friendly application called "bootscreen manager"

You can find on App manager.

It is installed in the settings panel

-----------------------------------------------------------

here, check it out: http://unleashthephones.com/2010/02/...n-for-maemo-5/

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

I don't think booting in N900 is slow comparing to some other phones .. try to completely shut down an iPhone or blackberry then turn it on again .. it will take longer time than N900 to boot up .. and if we look at the operation system in iPhone and blackberry they will be lighter than maemo on N900 , cause iPhone and blackberry are just smart phones but maemo N900 are much like PC as u said . so , N900 with this powerfull operation system is fast booting comparing to other phones with lighter operations .
And if want to compare booting speed in N900 to older Nokia devices like N95 or older , u are make a mistake, because the operation systems in those old phone are very simple and just nothing comparing to operation in N900 . so it's not strange if they are faster in booting ..
anyway , u can speed up booting by delete video booting and disable some features that must work when phone starts up , such as : wireless , chat accounts , use less number of desktops specially if u have 9 desktops , 2 will be enough.. also if u have less apps and more rootfs space , the boot will be faster .. I'm not professional , but I think u will get faster booting if did that .

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Very very true, especially Blackberry. Phone power buttons tend to lie these days -- even the N900, with its alarms that still work as the device is "powered off".

The question that follows from this -- is there any "low-power" state that N900 could be sent to, instead of its current normal power-down state, that would improve its boot performance without unacceptable battery use?

Look forward to trying reinob's init tweaks. Always hated the fritzy startup dots :)

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

@vi_:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=84398

Also, search all the posts (only 31) of this member, he tries to remove everything that isn't open source / replaceable / not needed

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Well, it's all up there on post#25. If you (or anyone) have a N900 with a proper microUSB port (in case something happens) you are all welcome to try what I've posted above and report the results here.

Re. low-power state.. this is the ACTDEAD mode in the N900. When you turn it off and there's an active pending alarm and/or the charger is connected, it will not really shutdown but go into this low-power mode. That's why alarms work when the unit is "off" (although perhaps the hardware allows also waking up from real off state..)

In theory the transition ACTDEAD -> USER mode should be faster than from OFF -> USER.

But really, the N900 boots so fast that the original goal of this thread seems to be now that of removing the dots :) [ which have an entirely negligible effect on boot time ]

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

IMO it eats so much battery booting up, I avoid switching off full stop.

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Are you sure? I always believed boots made the battery drop like insane but I more and more start to believe BME does some crappy calibration/recalculation after boot. I have seen growing my battery percentage in 10 mins after boot...

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

CPU at near full whack for 2 minutes (~200mA) or so compared with ~20mA standby current.

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Would love to see some documentation on what can be removed.

Meanwhile in my head: Making a script that contains all removable *safe* packages. User can thick which one needs to be deleted (zenity, anyone :P)


What happens when battery have been out? It just skips that screen and you can set the time later or do we get an semi-bricked device?

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

Mr pingu is correct, there is not actually THAT much power drain from booting, it is just BME giving wack values.

The lowest power state you can leave your n900 in that is not 'off' is offline mode.

In offline mode I have 3-4mA power drain, with my 1500mAh battery that is around 15.5 days(!) standby. Actdead mode is pointless (unless you have some heavy background stuff that runs all the time).

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

But sixwheeledbeasts comment has a point, too.

Indeed, it is not that much.

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

With 20mA standby (or average), your battery would last around 65 hours (almost 3 days).

If booting takes 2 minutes @ 200mA, it's using all of ~7mAh, which is 0.5% of your battery capacity, thus reducing your time-between-charges by a whole of.. wait for it.. 20min :)

How often do you reboot anyway?

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

It will come some day. I will start by seeing which standard packages are not present anymore in my dev-N900.

[ Note: to make things easier and faster, if ANYONE happens to flash his or her N900 completely, I would appreciate it if the first thing he or she does would be to send me the output of "dpkg -l". I can obviously extract the list of packages from a fiasco image, but the less effort it takes, the better.. ]

Nice idea. A console-GUI application allowing the user to tick boxes to remove suggested packages and perform suggested modifications and/or tweaks, such as:

"remove bme from system"
"eliminate actdead mode"
"create a runlevel for booting to shell"
"..."

Nothing. Your date and time is simply wrong. ntpdate to the rescue :)

Re: Faster Booting Nokia N900
 

According to your calculation, we could roughly boot up to 200 times with one charge!? I doubt it, but am also not going to test :D