I tend to look around the file system in any computer I can get my hands on. You actually learn a lot.

I have somewhere a sort-of flow diagram with the whole Maemo booting process (with all the weird upstart dependencies, etc.) Don't know if anybody may be interested, but if so I might scan it (it's on paper

Actually after posting my response above I went ahead and uninstalled the osso-startup-wizard. The N900 at least boots OK.