x60 : trying to boot to a debian in less than 2 seconds

[Charles Devereaux]

Hello

I'm still trying to improve boot time.

After some further optimizations (previous results : 2.2s for the kernel,
0.6s for the daemons),  I believe it should be possible to get a command
line in less than 2 seconds, since most of the time is spend
re-initializing the video chip (almost a full second) while there are some
features to prevent just that.

It seems that coreboot is spending some time initializing the video chip
for grub, then linux spends some time again - even when grub option "set
gfxpayload=keep" is set (which should prevent that) and when coreboot is
compiled with CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_KEEP_VESA_MODE

in kernel 3.10.45 :
[    0.291014] [drm] GMBUS [i915 gmbus panel] timed out, falling back to
bit ban
ging on pin 3
[    0.321926] [drm] initialized overlay support
[    0.384013] [drm] GMBUS [i915 gmbus vga] timed out, falling back to bit
bangi
ng on pin 2
[    0.570068] fbcon: inteldrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[    1.230010] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
[    1.258981] i915 0000:00:02.0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
[    1.258984] i915 0000:00:02.0: registered panic notifier
[    1.258992] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 for 0000:00:02.0 on
minor 0

I'm currently trying a recent kernel since some i915 patches have been
backported (cf http://blog.ffwll.ch/2014/04/neat-drmi915-stuff-for-315.html),
introducing the i915.fastboot option to do just that, but it does not help.

I must be doing something terribly wrong, but I just don't realize what
exactly.

Has anyone succeeded in keeping the vesa mode?

Charles