N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

Hi all,

Happy n800 user here....had it about a year now...love it. Just a simple matter of curiosity... My n800 boots MUCH faster (almost 2 to 1) when plugged into power as opposed to when it is unplugged and running entirely on battery. Aside from possibly getting more "juice" is there another reason for this? It also shuts down much faster as well. Now, understand...on battery power it still boots reasonably fast....it's just that when plugged in, it's MUCH faster.

dtrask
n800
Ubuntu Lover!

Re: N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

I'm making an educated guess, and I'm probably wrong, but here's my thoughts:

You know how when you have the iT plugged in to the wall, it shows a screen like "...Charging" (actually mine doesn't because it's broken, but that's beside the point)
I believe that the system is actually booted partially into a tiny linux that just controls functions such as charging and booting the tablet.
When unplugged, there is no such activity-- the device is off completely.

Some things to check out would be the initfs discussions around ITT and the threads on NOLO (the device's bootloader, which probably is responsible for the speedup when plugged in to power)

Anyway, I hope this helps somehow :)

Re: N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

it boots faster when plugged in because it's already on ex. like a computer put in standby will boot faster than a shutdown computer. it's also the same with shutdown because it never fully goes off

Re: N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

As has been mostly covered already, when it's plugged in, most of the system is already booted so it doesn't have to do much work to boot the rest.

Re: N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

Technopedantically, booting is short for bootstrapping; it's already completely booted, so it doesn't have to do much work to switch to runlevel 2.

Re: N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

Ahhh...now that I totally understand. As a Linux guy for many years I'm very familiar with runlevels. Thanks for clearing this up guys :-) Now I can sleep a little better (sometimes my mind races with stuff like this) ;-)

Re: N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

What I have experienced is something a little bit different. If you are running bootmenu its acts a little bit different. You can actually see that its booting.

So with bootmenu installed. I power off my 810. I the plug in external power, and it boots up. Brings me to the bootmenu. I select the partition I want to boot from, and the sceen goes black and then changes to charging. If I then hit the power button again it completely bypasses the bootmenu and boots from the partition I had chosen previously.

The same thing is happening without bootmenu, but if you have bootmenu installed you can see a little better whats happening.

Re: N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

Right, the initfs is brought up before the rootfs.

Re: N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

...and that's why there's a slight pause between plugging it in and it actually charging, because it partially boots up?

Re: N800 boots faster when plugged in...why?
 

Right. Most of the system is booted for charging. This is also why you can't get into flashing mode with the charger plugged in.