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I've had a look at these other questions that popped up but I don't think the first really answered any of my needs because it is for a media center. And the second one just has me scared to leave my Pi on all the time making it even more meaningful that I get faster boot times.

I have considered installing the system on a USB and using the SD only to boot. So I am open to any and all suggestions.

This is a demo model of a product we have developed and we know that after we get better hardware we may just have the faster boot time, but not only is this about getting our boot time to under 1 min or 30 sec but is also about learning about what is going on. Maybe many things are starting that should not be starting.

Is there anything I can do to improve boot speed?

Is the Raspberry Pi suitable for running continuously, 24/7?

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Spencer
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    Sorry, but *this is ridiculous*. 1) The boot time for raspbian is < 30 seconds -- so who cares? What do you want to save, 5 seconds? 10 seconds? Do you want it to boot instantaneously? *Be specific* and explain *why* you need this boot time. 2) If you want to leave the pi on 24/7, just do it, but *don't run emergency room equipment, heart monitors, etc.* This way no human beings will die because of a (quite nice!) $35 piece of toy electronics. Beyond that there is nothing to be scared of -- unless you can think of something *specific* and *explain what it is*. – goldilocks Mar 05 '13 at 01:56
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    Mine is closer to 3 min. Also this is about creating new things and this is the heart of a project I am making that is the heart of a new business. We will upgrade to newer/better hardware after we make some money, but this is not ridiculous to me. – Spencer Mar 05 '13 at 03:01
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    Let's try something more... constructive, shall we? Spencer, are you starting with a fresh OS install, or something you've built up? If the latter, can I suggest a fresh OS image and then installing only the bits that you need in order for your project to work? The other thing to do is to run 'dmesg' once the Pi has booted and make note of anything that seems to be taking a while to get through. Paste any lines where the timecode on the left side seems very high. (This is subjective, of course). Let's see if we can help you through this - 3 minutes is way to long so something must be happening – recantha Mar 05 '13 at 06:47
  • Oh, can you also say what SD card you're using as the speed of it will have some bearing on the speed of boot up. – recantha Mar 05 '13 at 06:52
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    If your startup time is really 3 minutes. Then it's not Raspbian at fault. Remove some services and programs. Even better if you can, start from a fresh image. – Vincent P Mar 05 '13 at 06:54
  • Just watched a youtube video of someone booting OpenELEC XBMC (which is the fattest thing I could think of on the pi) -- 45 seconds until the GUI and mouse cursor, done. My headless raspbian boots to prompt in 30 seconds, almost 1/3 of which is a forced fsck. So if your boot time is *3 minutes*, then you are running a whole lot more junk than any stock image -- how can anyone help you with that if we don't know what's up? – goldilocks Mar 05 '13 at 11:18
  • have you got unnecessary dhcp trying to assign an IP address? It's the one thing that if I get wrong I see holding up the Pi booting. My stock Raspbian is ready to ssh into after 25secs – rob Oct 30 '13 at 20:48
  • ok goldilocks... i'll play... i want a pi to boot as fast as possible, to the point of being able to boot instantaneously, if that were possible, because i want to use the device in a battery powered system. As a result, to save power consumption, i want to power down the pi when it isn't being used, and bring it up when it needs to be used, via some input. However, people using the device can't be expected to wait 30 seconds, or even 10 seconds to use the device. I need a very fast boot time, as fast as it can be made. –  Feb 13 '14 at 15:16

2 Answers2

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First select an SD card with a good 4k random read/write speed, sandisk tend to be good for this.

The following will shave 2-3 seconds off the boot time

edit cmdline.txt to read:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 rootflags=commit=120,data=writeback elevator=deadline noatime nodiratime fastboot data=writeback rootwait quiet

and remove services on boot. I've managed under 20 seconds.

Or use Archlinux, which can easily be made to boot under 10 seconds.

Mike Redrobe
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You want faster? You have to make a custom kernel. Or you can just use one that somebody made.

Basically all the junk is ripped out, and you are left with basics. Then you add what you need.

myhd
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Piotr Kula
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