How to speed up, customize early boot process; skip password etc?

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r-tea
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How to speed up, customize early boot process; skip password etc?

Post by r-tea »

How to speed up the early boot process? How to customize it?
I wonder If I can someway edit the 15 sec time limit for the options and disabling the password prompt. And maybe even speeding up the easy.sfs copying someway.

Last edited by Flash on Mon Mar 17, 2025 11:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Reformed the subject line into a question
Thanos
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Re: Customizing early boot. Speed up, skip password etc.

Post by Thanos »

This is my customized initrd file.

No password asking,no 15 seconds waiting ,go to the desktop at once.

http://4275.com/rrvkxf

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Re: Customizing early boot. Speed up, skip password etc.

Post by pp4mnklinux »

Hello everybody:

I thought about this, but I only want to change this default 15 seconds time to 3.

Is it possible?

What must we edit to do this, @BarryK ?

Thanks a lot.

Have a nice day u all.

----------- edited -------------------

@r-tea viewtopic.php?t=13820

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Re: Customizing early boot. Speed up, skip password etc.

Post by eric52 »

Hey, r-tea, the posting by Thanos went south (still visible on reply screen), so I assume initrd is not your issue and you are looking to improve a bootloader, which you must specify for advice. Generally, Grub4Dos is simple, ugly, and slow, but I love it dearly as I have no sense of aesthetics or urgency. I also like watching the loading scroll, even though I can't read that fast. Back to loaders, Grub2 is attractive and faster but unnecessarily complicated. Isolinux is ancient. I'm just learning Limine, but that should probably be your choice. If that's not your issue, I'm stumped. I don't customize initrd or anything, because I don't mind the one-second delay to look at my disks, and easyOS boots plenty fast on an old i5 with 8Gb of RAM. It's also plenty fast on USB. It's noticeably faster than any other Linux distro I have. I'll try it out on various machines to be sure, but I expect it to blaze right along. Once booted, it's faster than I am. In any event, if you specify what you want, I'm sure that someone faster than me will help you out.

I don't use TahrPup anymore, but I still like it. Bookworm, S15, KLA-KDE, KLV, Noble, FossaDog, BionicDog, and BionicPup-Revival on every machine, 'cause I'm always breaking something. First line of code - 1968.

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Re: Customizing early boot. Speed up, skip password etc.

Post by r-tea »

Thanos wrote: Mon Mar 17, 2025 8:58 pm

This is my customized initrd file.

No password asking,no 15 seconds waiting ,go to the desktop at once.

http://4275.com/rrvkxf

Thank you.
My early boot is in Polish and I would like it to stay as it is. Can you give mi a clue how to edit is instead?

eric52 wrote: Mon Mar 17, 2025 9:32 pm

Hey, r-tea, the posting by Thanos went south (still visible on reply screen), so I assume initrd is not your issue and you are looking to improve a bootloader, which you must specify for advice. Generally, Grub4Dos is simple, ugly, and slow ...

Never played with any GRUB at all. The clue I look for is how to edit the early boot parameters: time delays, password prompt etc.

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Re: How to speed up, customize early boot process; skip password etc?

Post by BarryK »

If you want to edit 'initrd', all that you need to do is click on it to open it up, then click on it again to update.

To make any changes, you need to study the 'init' script and scripts in /sbin folder.

There is a problem; initrd contains /etc/DISTRO_SPECS which is the same as /etc/DISTRO_SPECS in the main filesystem.

What this means is when you update to a new version of EasyOS, there will be a new 'initrd' file, and you will have to open it up and make your changes. You will have to do this at every update.

Note, I used to be keen on reducing the bootup time, but eventually decided, why does it matter?
If bootup takes 15 seconds instead of 5 seconds, so what?

When I run Easy, like right now on my laptop, bootup then use it for a few hours.
So what does it matter if bootup takes an extra 10-15 seconds? It's not like I'm rebooting every 10 minutes.

...just my thoughts on the matter. You may pursue faster boot times, if that pleases you.

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Re: Customizing early boot. Speed up, skip password etc.

Post by Thanos »

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@pp4mnklinux @r-tea
If you want to disable the 15 seconds waiting,open the file "init" in the file "initrd", find the text "read -t", edit the text "15" in the same line. My value in picture is "1".

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Re: Customizing early boot. Speed up, skip password etc.

Post by r-tea »

Thanos wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:55 pm

@pp4mnklinux @r-tea
If you want to disable the 15 seconds waiting,open the file "init" in the file "initrd", find the text "read -t", edit the text "15" in the same line. My value in picture is "1".

Done it before. This part was easy. Getting rid of password prompt is much worse. I got kernel panic :shock:
I remarked lines 2145 and 2146. It's not working.

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Re: How to speed up, customize early boot process; skip password etc?

Post by bugnaw333 »

15 secs boot-up is enough for my first coffee sip. :D

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Re: Customizing early boot. Speed up, skip password etc.

Post by Thanos »

r-tea wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 6:11 pm
Thanos wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 2:55 pm

@pp4mnklinux @r-tea
If you want to disable the 15 seconds waiting,open the file "init" in the file "initrd", find the text "read -t", edit the text "15" in the same line. My value in picture is "1".

Done it before. This part was easy. Getting rid of password prompt is much worse. I got kernel panic :shock:
I remarked lines 2145 and 2146. It's not working.

Can you download my initrd file? Open it and look.
I only find the function ask_pw() and add a line at first line
"return 0".
The function has been skip.

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Re: How to speed up, customize early boot process; skip password etc?

Post by r-tea »

Of course. Already done. Thanks :thumbup2:
Now, I wonder If there is an other way to speed up easy.sfs copying to RAM besides the hardware upgrade?

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Re: Customizing early boot. Speed up, skip password etc.

Post by BarryK »

r-tea wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 6:11 pm

Done it before. This part was easy. Getting rid of password prompt is much worse. I got kernel panic :shock:
I remarked lines 2145 and 2146. It's not working.

You can't get rid of the password prompt if you had entered a password at first bootup, as the password is required to de-crypt folders in the working partition.

If you did not enter a password at first bootup, then the folders won't be encrypted and you can get rid of the password wait at bootup.

For encrypted folders, it is possible it is possible to remove the encryption by making copies of the folders, then deleting the encrypted folders, then renaming the copies to the original folder names.

In the 'init' script in the initrd, you can see what folders are encrypted -- they are /mnt/wkg/.session, releases and files

To make the backup copies, boot a different EasyOS, mount the working-partition of the Easy whose password you want to change, then create the backup folders, using "cp -a ..."
Then delete the folders and rename the backups.

You will also need to edit sfs/settings/initrd/CONFIG in the working-partition of the Easy whose encryption you want to remove, change it to ALLOW_ASK_PW='no'

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