I will try once again to begin to write in this blog… but I make no promises! 

Biggest news of late is that I am now the proud owner of an Intel 25-M g2 SSD.  This thing rocks!!!  I am actually maxing out my SATA bus!  I can reach a full 250MB/sec Read speeds and my home system now boots in around 20 seconds.  I am still trying to reduce the time a bit further.  If I could do it on a netbook, I should be able to do it on a computer with some real processing power too.

This site lists a number of improvements for ubuntu but the one that I liked was this:

set MODULES=dep in /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf and run sudo update-initramfs -u

By doing this tweak, I was able to shave off another 2.3 seconds from my boot time.

Dell Mini 9 boots in 10.62 seconds!

1. Shorten the boot menu timeout If you’re fed up of waiting for the boot menu to timeout before your favourite operating system launches, open ‘/boot/grub/menu.lst’ with a text editor and look for the line starting with ‘timeout’. Just lower the number to its the right. This is the number of seconds the menu system will wait before booting the default operating system (0 or 1 is not recommended). 2. Monitor boot performance One of the best utilities you can install for checking your system’s performance is called ‘bootchart’. After installation and a reboot, ‘bootchart’ will create a complex graph of everything that’s running and taking up resources as your system boots, and place an image of the graph in the /var/log/bootgraph folder. 3. Improve boot speed When the boot menu appears (you might have to press escape) select the default Ubuntu boot option and press ‘e’. Cursor down to the line starting with ‘kernel’ and press ‘e’ again. You’re now editing the boot parameters, and you need to press space and add the word ‘profile’. Press return followed by ‘b’ to boot. Disk access during your boot sequence will now be profiled, which means that subsequent booting should be faster.

CONCURRENCY=none

to

CONCURRENCY=shell

echo “Starting…” > /var/log/rclocal.log
echo “now I will change swappiness and cache pressure” >> /var/log/rclocal.log
sysctl -w vm.swappiness=0
sysctl -w vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50

echo “now I will switch to laptop mode 5″ >> /var/log/rclocal.log
echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode

echo “now I will adjust link power management” >> /var/log/rclocal.log
echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy

echo “now I will change dirty_writeback to 1500″ >> /var/log/rclocal.log
echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs

echo “now I will change dirty_ratio to 20″ >> /var/log/rclocal.log
echo 20 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio

echo “now I will adjust dirty_background_ratio” >> /var/log/rclocal.log
echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio

echo “now I will change sched_mc_power_savings to 1″ >> /var/log/rclocal.log
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_mc_power_savings

echo “now I will disable WOL” >> /var/log/rclocal.log
# Disable Wake-on-LAN to conserve power
ethtool -s eth0 wol d

echo “now I will force 100Mbps” >> /var/log/rclocal.log
# Force 100Mbps on Gigabit adapter to reduce power
ethtool -s eth0 speed 100

echo “now I will undervolt the CPUs” >> /var/log/rclocal.log
# Undervolt the CPUs to conserve power
for i in /sys/devices/system/cpu/*/cpufreq/phc_controls; do echo “9:25 72:20 6:17 134:17″ > $i; done

echo “now I will decrease power of USB while idle” >> /var/log/rclocal.log
# Decrease power usage of USB while idle
for i in /sys/bus/usb/devices/?-?/power/level; do echo auto > $i; done #place all child USB devices in auto power mode
# for i in /sys/bus/usb/devices/3-?/power/level; do echo auto > $i; done #wake up the camera so it can be used — does not always work so will just live with all devices in auto mode

echo “now I will change the audio power savings” >> /var/log/rclocal.log
echo 1 >/sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

echo “now I will put the sata drive into min_power mode” >> /var/log/rclocal.log
for i in /sys/class/scsi_host/*/link_power_management_policy; do echo min_power > $i; done

echo “All Done” >> /var/log/rclocal.log

exit 0

Mods…
4 port usb hub
SSD activity light