Follow

Does anyone have any tips for reducing Debian's initramfs boot time beyond `MODULES=dep` and `COMPRESS=lz4`? I don't care enough to take on having to manually run a new kernel build every time an update comes down, but I'm having trouble finding an equivalent to Archwiki's "mkinitcpio/Minimal initramfs" page which explains what further customization hooks there are.

(I'm setting this thing up as an sccache node, so there's no GUI and it's running unattended-upgrades, but that doesn't mean I can't try to get the boot times as low as maintainably possible. I've got another one I might have to resort to running Archlinux on to get boot times appropriate for my "fake the Weecee I can't afford to build by using a fullscreen 86box" idea.)

@ssokolow Build your own kernel, put all required stuff in kernel (Y) instead of module (M) and you can get rid of initrd completely

@r0b0 Yes, I'm aware of that option and, as I said, I don't want to have to manually rebuild my kernel with each update. Is there an "official enough that it's unlikely to break" guide to how to hook Debian's unattended-upgrades to apply a patch to the kernel config each time one comes down?

@ssokolow You could set MODULES=list in /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf and then manually specify in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules the list of modules you know are needed on your system to mount root.

@ema Good point. I should try that. That said, I'm more concerned about how Archwiki says that the `udev` component which powers `UUID`-based boot device lookup has a non-trivial impact on boot times and `MODULES=list` wouldn't omit that.

@ssokolow thanks BTW you reminded me to move to MODULES=dep and COMPRESS=xz, my initrd went from 107M to 34M haha

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.