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Panther 10.3.2 and Boot Times

The symbolic link reduced my boot time (power button to login screen) by almost 33% (49 secs vs 1 min 13 secs). Nice little trick. Are there any other little tweaks like this?

Hickman
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Yes, you're right about the hardware test. It takes about 8 seconds to complete on my iMac. But it only needs 2 (!) for the Mac OS starting up screen, and another 5 for the Mac OS X interface to load. Total = 15.
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I still don't by that. You can't be measuring from the time you push the power button until icons appear on the finder desktop.
 
MacBandit said:
I still don't by that. You can't be measuring from the time you push the power button until icons appear on the finder desktop.
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You never gave a reason for saying that Macs can't boot in less than 25 seconds; therefore, I have no reason to buy your argument either. By the way, I do not know if it was a one-time thing; I haven't rebooted the iMac since (and measured the time). If you wish, I can repeat the test and report back on the results.

<edit> My timing method was flawed: actual boot time is closer to 30 seconds.</edit>
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
You never gave a reason for saying that Macs can't boot in less than 25 seconds; therefore, I have no reason to buy your argument either. By the way, I do not know if it was a one-time thing; I haven't rebooted the iMac since (and measured the time). If you wish, I can repeat the test and report back on the results.
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Sorry about that. It's not a set in stone measurement. It's just a result of tests by many people over the last 5 years and no machine in that time that I have read about or tested myself has resulted in a sub 25sec boot time.
 
MacBandit said:
Sorry about that. It's not a set in stone measurement. It's just a result of tests by many people over the last 5 years and no machine in that time that I have read about or tested myself has resulted in a sub 25sec boot time.
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Thanks for that. I will retest and report back on the boot times I get.

<edit> Testing is complete. Here are the results (timed with a stopwatch):
Boot #3: 35 secs
Boot #4: 30 secs

Therefore, I can conlude that MacBandit was correct. My time of 15 secs was timed from screen on to Mac OS load. If I add on 15 secs for power on to screen on, I get the 30-35 sec boot times in my tests. My original timing method was accurate, but flawed.</edit>
 
I also believe that 15 seconds is entirely unrealistic. Mine ranges from 45-50 seconds. This is on a PowerBook 1.25GHz, 1GB RAM, on a 5400RPM 80GB HDD. I could prolly shave a few seconds off by not having Apache initializing at start-up as well as pulling out my airport extreme card so that it doesn't try to initialize my network settings. But I would never get anywhere near 15 seconds.

Hickman
 
Brian Hickman said:
I also believe that 15 seconds is entirely unrealistic. Mine ranges from 45-50 seconds. This is on a PowerBook 1.25GHz, 1GB RAM, on a 5400RPM 80GB HDD. I could prolly shave a few seconds off by not having Apache initializing at start-up as well as pulling out my airport extreme card so that it doesn't try to initialize my network settings. But I would never get anywhere near 15 seconds.

Hickman
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You and MacBandit are both correct. See the edit to my above post for 'real' boot times.

<edit> I've now edited all my previous posts in this thread to reflect the real boot time.</edit>
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Thanks for that. I will retest and report back on the boot times I get.

<edit> Testing is complete. Here are the results (timed with a stopwatch):
Boot #3: 35 secs
Boot #4: 30 secs

Therefore, I can conlude that MacBandit was correct. My time of 15 secs was timed from screen on to Mac OS load. If I add on 15 secs for power on to screen on, I get the 30-35 sec boot times in my tests. My original timing method was accurate, but flawed.</edit>
Click to expand...


Thanks, and congratulations too. 30secs is still incredibly fast but not inconceivable especially on a newer iMac. Something to keep in mind is the more hardware options you have i.e. ram, drives, video cards, airport, bluetooth the longer it will take your machine to perform it's startup hardware test. For this reason even though PowerMacs are traditionally the fastest Macs they do not always have the fastest boot times. My boot times on my Dual/MDD Powermacs have ranged from 28secs to 55secs starting with 10.2 up to 10.3.2. My current startup times are around 40secs but this is without the hack. I tried the hack out for a while and it made a small difference. I reinstalled my system when 10.3.2 came out and decided to not redo the hack as I rarely shut my computer down or restart it and the the difference in any case was hardly worth it.

On machines with slower drives and slower cpus the hack is most definitely worth it as it speeds up the actual system load times through caching which the system is suppose to do by default anyhow. So it's not really a hack but more like a fix.
 
Woah... tried it on a dual G4 and cut 22 seconds off boot--impressive. Interestingly, the desktop icons seemed to pop up faster after the doc with this applied, but I wonder if that's just placebo at work.

For reference, the breakdown:

End of chime to screen on (Apple monitor): 19 seconds both ways
Screen on to appearance of spinner: 4 seconds both ways

(so far, just hardware testing, so I wouldn't expect that to change)

Spinner appearance to icons: 42 seconds before, 20 seconds after.

So really, it more than doubled the part of the boot that it applies to. And if you don't count the hardware test, that is indeed a roughly 20 second boot for the actual MacOS--quite speedy.

I want to try this with my G5, but I'm always a little paranoid about messing with my home machine. Might just wait for 10.3.3.
 
generally i don't reboot at all, if i do they always have been under 30 seconds, dvi powerbook.

oh i didn't really read the first post, but i never had to fix this, but yeah i have seen that tip many times.
 
johnnyjibbs said:
Open up the terminal and type:

sudo ln -s /System/Library/Extensions/BootCache.kext/Contents/Resources/BootCacheControl /usr/sbin/BootCacheControl
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Holy crap! I just got round to trying this now....
From 2'02" down to 54" 😀
 
Big improvement here. From about 1:50 to about 0:50 with automatic log in. Breakdown of the times is as follows (b1 and b2 are before the fix, a1..a5 are after):

______Screen on____Blue background___Desktop picture___Icons (done)
b1____0:11_________0:43_______________1:13_____________1:52
b2____0:13_________0:45_______________1:11_____________1:48
a1____0:12_________0:43_______________1:10_____________1:46
a2____0:12_________0:33_______________0:43_____________0:59
a3____0:12_________0:35_______________0:43_____________0:50
a4____0:12_________0:35_______________0:43_____________0:47
a5____0:12_________0:36_______________0:45_____________0:48
 
i also remember reading that before you update to 10.3.3 you'll need to undo that change or things might go awry. if you've done the command by copy and paste, it'd be good to save the command, and the undo command in a text file for later reference.


Any truth to this??
 
TyWahn said:
i also remember reading that before you update to 10.3.3 you'll need to undo that change or things might go awry. if you've done the command by copy and paste, it'd be good to save the command, and the undo command in a text file for later reference.


Any truth to this??
Click to expand...

This fix will only cause a problem if you copied the needed file over. The suggestion that is made here is to make a Symbolic Link which is similar to an alias so even if the original file changes the symbolic link will just link to the new file thus no problem.
 
Daveman Deluxe said:
1'15", down from 2'06".
Click to expand...


what the heck do you have your system loading at startup that it took over 2 min to boot? I looked in your profile to see what system you had expecting to see a 233 beige G3 running panther or something and I see you have an ibook 700. must have a really slow HD I guess.
 
blue&whiteman said:
what the heck do you have your system loading at startup that it took over 2 min to boot? I looked in your profile to see what system you had expecting to see a 233 beige G3 running panther or something and I see you have an ibook 700. must have a really slow HD I guess.
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All the Apple laptops start up very slowly do to the hard drive. I would be really suspect of anyone posting a sub 1 minute startup with any Powerbook with the OEM drive.
 
Well I quoted a 54sec boot time for my iBook, but that's just to login window. I guess an extra 30 seconds are necessary to get desktop, images, a dock. So I'd say 1'30 for boot on my iBook.
 
Chappers said:
When you upgrade Toughboy let me know how you got on. Was the Turkish useful. Also can you remind me about the price of Panther in Turkey.
Click to expand...

I upgraded to panther yesterday.. A lot of nice features.. I also tried the trick on this thread too, and it dropped my boot to 1:15..

Well the Panther itself does not come with Turkish support, you have to buy it extra, but it does work well, not I can use the Turkish-only letters too..

panther is 99 Euros + tax, which is 120 Euros in Turkey and they charge another 19 Euros for the Turkish pack (which I hope it will be included on 10.4) ofcourse that 19 Euros has another 18% tax which happens to be 23-24 Euros and in total it is like 150 for a whole new operating system.. it is definetly not worth it in my opinion.. but you know, its their way, or the highway.. and I took the highway on my count! 😉
 
On my 12'' MiniDVI Powerbook G4, 48 seconds from the time my finger presses the power button to the time the login window appears. It takes another 26 seconds for login after that.

I'd test my desktop, but I really don't feel like rebooting it. It stays on pretty much 24/7.
 
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