International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 6, Issue 4, April-2015
ISSN 2229-5518
Elimination of Bootload Time of an Operating
System
Sohan Nipunage, Surbhi Shukla, Mayuri Patil
Abstract—There has been significant improvement in the computing power by inclusion of various technologies that are needed to be integrated into one single operating system for the convenience of users. But there is no improvement in the boot load area of the operating system. Hence our focus has been apprehended on the boot load time since it was of immediate concern to decrease the booting time. The proposed operating system is being developed by modifying the Linux kernel and will use a log based system which will resume the leftover scenario when restarted. We propose a software solution by modifying Linux kernel that can replicate the left over scenario of the desktop of the user when the user logs off and loading operating system eliminated boot time.
Index Terms—Booting, GRUB (Grand unified Boot Loader), Hibernation , Kernel, Log based Booting,
—————————— ——————————
301
HERE has been significant improvement in the computing power by inclusion of various technologies that are needed to be integrated into one single operating system for the
convenience of users. Hence the focus has been apprehended on the boot load time since it was of immediate concern to increase the computing power. Boot load is a technology that has not seen many advances in recent years. It has only improved in the terms of computing technology but there has been no signifi- cant improvement in the boot load area of the Operating system till date since there are hardware limitations to the same.
We propose a software solution by modifying Linux kernel that can replicate the left over scenario of the desktop of the user when he logged off. The loading of other drivers and features can happen in the background. As they say, Time is Money; we are providing a solution to completely eliminate the boot time of Linux based operating systems. Linux is the first truly free Unix-like operating system. The GNU Project was launched in
1983 by Richard Stallman to develop a Unix-compatible operat- ing system called GNU, which is free software. Many programs and utilities were contributed by developers around the world, and by 1991 most of the components of the system were ready. Still missing was the kernel. The use of logs for debugging is as antediluvian as computing itself. Log-based responses are use- ful not only for understanding the internal operation of a sys- tem but also the timing and relationship of activities within the system through the time-ordered messages within a time- stamped log.
————————————————
Author Sohan Nipunage is currently pursuing bachelors degree program in information technology engineering in Mumbai University, India, PH-
+919867509494. E-mail: sohan.nipunage@gmail.com
Co-Author Surbhi Shukla is currently pursuing bachelors degree program
in information technology engineering in Mumbai University, India, PH-
+918149343226. E-mail: shuklasurbhi010@gmail.com
Co-Author Mayuri Patil is currently pursuing bachelors degree program
in information technology engineering in Mumbai University, India, PH-
+919869559666. E-mail: patilmayuri2293@gmail.com
An operating system is the program that, after being initially loaded into the computer by a boot program, manages all the other programs in a computer. The other programs are called applications or application programs. The application pro- grams make use of the operating system by making requests for services through a defined application program interface (API). In addition, users can interact directly with the operat- ing system through a user interface such as a command lan- guage or a graphical user interface (GUI). For example, Linux OS, Mac OS, Windows OS.
An operating system performs these services for applications:
In a multitasking operating system where multiple pro- grams can be running at the same time, the operating sys- tem determines which applications should run in what order and how much time should be allowed for each application before giving another application a turn.
It manages the sharing of internal memory among multi- ple applications.
It handles input and output to and from attached hard-
ware devices, such as hard disks, printers, and dial-up ports.
It sends messages to each application or interactive user
(or to a system operator) about the status of operation and any errors that may have occurred.
It can offload the management of what are called batch jobs (for example, printing) so that the initiating applica- tion is freed from this work.
The Kernel within the Windows operating system is some- what different than that of LINIX because Microsoft has taken a somewhat different approach to the Kernel’s design. The term “Kernel mode” refers to not only the Kernel itself but the
IJSER © 2015
International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 6, Issue 4, April-2015
ISSN 2229-5518
302
HAL (hall.dll) and various system services as well. This would include the HAL (hal.dll) at the bottom layer, followed by the Kernel at the second layer. The third layer is the Ker- nel. Above that (fourth level) we have various managers for Objects, processes, Memory, Security, Cache, Plug in Play (PnP), Power, Configuration and I/O. The file system and Win32 GDI are also at this level. Many of the items at this fourth level are referred to collectively as the Windows Execu- tive (ntoskrnl.exe). At the top and fifth layer of the Kernel mode are system services.
Boot loader or boot strap loader is a program that starts the
'chain reaction' which ends with the entire operating system
being loaded. Boot loader comprises of BIOS (Basic Input
Output System) or Boot monitor which executes Master Boot
Record (MBR) located in the first sector of bootable disk. MBR
contains information about Grand Unified Boot loader
(GRUB) or Linux Loader(LILO). GRUB loads and executes
kernel and kernel executes init() method. Init identifies the
default init level from /etc/inittab and uses that to load all
appropriate programs.
Now a days it is common in several laptops that they have a suspend option. Suspend option technically saves the state of the machine to a file system or to a partition and switches to standby mode. Later resuming the machine the saved state is loaded back to RAM and the machine can continue its work. Upon hibernation, the computer saves the contents of its ran- dom access memory (RAM) to a hard disk or other non- volatile storage. When the system is resumed, the computer is exactly as it was before entering hibernation. When used to save power as computing isn’t being performed, hibernation is similar to sleep mode; however, it saves more power at the cost of slower resumption. TuxOnIce (formerly known as Suspend2) is an implementation of the suspend-to-disk (or hibernate) feature which is available as patches for the 2.6
Linux kernel. During the 2.5 kernel era, Pavel Machek forked
the original out-of-tree version of swsusp (then at approxi-
mately beta 10) and got it merged into the vanilla kernel, while
development continued in the swsusp/Suspend2/TuxOnIce
line. TuxOnIce includes support for SMP, high memory and
preemption.
Booting time is comparatively more (10sec with high-end hardware).
No solution for loading process snapshot on boot.
No software solution for independent hardware platform.
Slow operating boot load response and hence time con- suming.
We propose a software solution by modifying Linux kernel that can replicate the left over scenario of the desktop of the user when he logged off. The loading of other drivers and fea-
tures can take place in the background. The use of logs for debugging is as old as computing itself. Logs are useful not only for understanding the internal operation of a system but also the timing and relationship of activities within the system through the time-ordered messages within a time-stamped log. Some of the unique advantages of our proposed system are:
Significant improvement in the computing power for
RAID systems.
Improvement in the CPU cycles by enhancing the CPU
utilization to its maximum performance.
Log based systems provide a system time stamp that helps to perform the tasks that may not be existent after the system is restarted. This helps in defining a predetermined path for execution of processes. With this log based system we can im- plement the user process before booting the operating system so that we can execute the same processes that the user left before shutting down the operating system.
The device drivers are soft wares that control the basic system hardware devices such as keyboards, graphics, display adapters, memory and externally connected devices. These device drivers are important as they are the building blocks of the operating system control.
Our proposed system will provide loading of those drivers that are needed for the system to load so as to decrease the unnecessary booting time of the operating system. We consid- er a specific memory limit so that if the user process has memory that is excess to be handled by the memory manage- ment of the operating system then we can schedule it at the end since we want immediate system boot up.
Our proposed system is based on modifying the Linux Kernel which is available for free as it is open source devel- opment. The kernel will load the parameters of the processes from the log and ensure that the booting time is reduced. We are modifying Kernel at its basic level where we are concerned about reducing the booting time and not reducing the process lag or increasing the process speed.
Hibernation is a process that is designed to save power. Here the hibernation enters the operating system into sleep mode by saving the user processes with their memory man- agement and addresses into RAM and then turns of the power for the devices that need not consume the efficient power such as Display, HDD, CD-DVD drive, Keyboard, mouse, external devices, etc. Still the power supply can’t be turned off since to keep memory and addresses bus active it needs to have power supply on. Now our proposed system will replicate and not implement the hibernation process by modifying the kernel. The system will save the basic application processes that the user is accessing before shutting down the system and thus will be added into the system log which will be accessed later
IJSER © 2015
International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 6, Issue 4, April-2015
ISSN 2229-5518
303
by the kernel during the next boot of the operating system.
Our proposed system is based on modification of the Linux kernel so as the requirements for our project are com- paratively less and are more basic in terms of functionality and operating functions. Hence we provide a basic standard of requirements that we are working and since our project can be scaled from low parametric hardware to high-end parametric hardware we are more focused on its system independent im- plementation.
With development of research in elimination of boot load time, it will be possible to develop a fast responsive operating system that will result into a better performance and integra- tion of high speed tools. Not only a pc would be benefitted from the research but with more modification for suitable de- vices such as personal PDA's phones and smart devices will enhance the usage of technology in a more improved way. Research will be carried out by focusing on memory manage- ment and registry addressing by which a modified Linux ker- nel can load hibernation-like system to eliminate the boot time of Linux based operating system. A smart, fast, easy and high- ly responsive operating systems for future devices.
Reduced boot time by 45 seconds to 11 seconds excluding
VM delay – Probable reduction from 10seconds to
3seconds on fresh installation
Processes booting according to the modified sequence.
Removed SATA/Flash Drive input check from the boot menu, loads faster by acknowledging from the previous boot.
A Large Hadron Collider Project Carried out by CERN in Ge- neva generates 15TeraBytes of data in one single experiment. They need almost a year to process the data and then perform the next experiment. Our system can be installed on the super
IJSER © 2015
International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 6, Issue 4, April-2015
ISSN 2229-5518
304
computers and can result into an increased system response time as our system can be modified as an application and hence with eliminated boot time, system can switch on/off constantly on completion of the processes and thus conserving energy and reducing time of processing. This will improve their productivity and hence help in further development of their project.
[1] R.Love, “Linux Kernel Development”.
[2] J.Feldman, “The Linux startup process”, Hewlett-Packard. [3] V.Mahajan, “Hibernation in Linux”.
[4] Daniel P. Bovet, “Understanding Linux Kernel”.
[5] Tim R. Bird, “Methods to Improve Bootup Time in Linux”, in Proc. Of the
Linux Symposium, 2004.
[6] Kunhoon Baik, “Boosting up Embedded Linux device: experience on
Linux-based Smartphone”.
[7] http://www.elinux.org [8] http://www.tldp.org/ [9] https://www.kernel.org
IJSER © 2015