Free boot scootin boogie software for linux

Bootchart is a software for performance analysis and visualization of the GNU/Linux boot process. Resource utilization and process information are collected during the boot process and can later be displayed in a PNG, SVG or EPS-encoded chart.

The boot process is modified to start the boot logger (/sbin/bootchartd) instead of /sbin/init. The boot logger will run in background and collect information from the proc file system (/proc/[PID]/stat, /proc/stat and /proc/diskstats).

The statistics are logged to a virtual memory file system (tmpfs). Once the boot process completes (denoted by the existence of specific processes), the log files are packaged to /var/log/bootchart.tgz.

The log package can later be processed using a Java application which builds the process tree and renders a performance chart. The chart may then be analyzed to examine process dependency and overall resource utilization. A renderer web form is also available on the project web site.

The chart can then be analyzed to examine process dependency and overall resource utilization.

Runing:

1. Install bootchartd and the bootchart renderer. See INSTALL for details.

2. Modify your boot loader (GRUB/LILO) if necessary. Alternatively, change the kernel command line interactively upon reboot.
Reboot.

3. Verify that /var/log/bootchart.tgz was created and contains the log files.

4. Render the chart by running:

$ java -jar bootchart.jar

Alternatively (if no Java Development Kit is installed to build the JAR package), the web renderer may be used.

To use the web renderer from a script, run:
curl --form format=svg --form log=@/var/log/bootchart.tgz
http://bootchart.klika.si:8080/bootchart/render > bootchart.svgz

(optionally replacing the svg/bootchart.svgz pair with png/bootchart.png or eps/bootchart.eps.gz)

5. View the generated image and analyze the chart.
SVG images may be viewed using any of the following programs:
- rsvg-view (librsvg; GNOME)
- svgdisplay (ksvg; KDE)
- Gimp (using the gimp-svg plugin)
- Inkscape
- Squiggle (Batik; http://xml.apache.org/batik/)

To get help for additional options, run:

$ java -jar bootchart -h

How it works:

Logger Startup

The boot logger (/sbin/bootchartd) is run by the kernel instead of /sbin/init. This can be achieved by modifying the GRUB or LILO kernel command line, e.g.:

/boot/grub/menu.lst
[...]
title Fedora Core (2.6.10) - bootchart
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.10 ro root=/dev/hda1 init=/sbin/bootchartd
initrd /initrd-2.6.10.img

The installation script and RPM package will try to add the boot loader entry automatically.

The boot logger will start itself in the background and immediately run the default init process, /sbin/init. The boot process will then continue as usual.

Data Collection

Since the root partition is mounted read-only during boot, the logger needs to store data in memory, using a virtual memory file system (tmpfs).

As soon as the /proc file system is mounted — usually early in the sysinit script — the logger will start collecting output from various files:
/proc/stat system-wide CPU statistics: user, system, IO and idle times
/proc/diskstats system-wide disk statistics: disk utilization and throughput
(only available in 2.6 kernels)
/proc/[PID]/stat information about the running processes: start time, parent PID, process state, CPU usage, etc.

The contents of these files are periodically appended to corresponding log files, every 0.2 seconds by default.

The logger will try to detect the end of the boot process by looking for specific processes. For example, when in runlevel 5 (multi-user graphical mode), it will look for gdmgreeter, kdm_greet, etc. As soon as one of these processes is found running, the logger will stop collecting data, package the log files and store them to /var/log/bootchart.tgz.

Optional Process Accounting

In most cases, the output from /proc/[PID]/stat files suffices to recreate the process tree. It is possible however, that a short-lived process will not get picked up by the logger. If that process also forks new processes, the logger will lack dependency information for these "orphaned" processes — meaning that they might get incorrectly grouped by the chart renderer.

When truly accurate dependency information is required, process accounting may be utilized. If configured, the kernel will keep a log file with detailed information about processes. BSD process accounting v3 includes information about the process PID and parent PID (PPID) — effectively enabling an accurate reconstruction of the process tree.

To enable process accounting, the kernel needs to be configured to include CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT_V3, under:

[ ] General setup
[ ] BSD Process Accounting
[ ] BSD Process Accounting version 3 file format

The GNU accounting utilities (package psacct or acct) also need to be installed. The boot logger will use the accton command to enable process accounting; it will include the accounting log in the tarball.

Visualization

The log tarball is later passed to the Java application for parsing and rendering the data. The CPU and disk statistics are used to render stacked area and line charts. The process information is used to create a Gantt chart showing process dependency, states and CPU usage.

A typical boot sequence consists of several hundred processes. Since it is difficult to visualize such amount of data in a comprehensible way, tree pruning is utilized. Idle background processes and short-lived processes are removed. Similar processes running in parallel are also merged together.

Finally, the performance and dependency charts are renderer as a single image in either PNG, SVG or EPS format.

Borg Live is a bootable CD-Rom containing a GNU/Linux operative system, that permits you to boot directly from the CD, without the need of an hard disk installation .
The system is based on Slax , the Slackware Linux Live CD.
Main features:
- Kernel 2.4.24 with Openmosix clustering support
- X Graphical system
- XFCE Window Manager
To use the Live CD , you need:
A Computer PC-Compatible ( not a MAC one )
A Bios that permit to boot from the CD drive
A Pentium III ( or AMD equivalent ) or better CPU
64 Mb RAM
A CD-Rom or DVD unit
A Mouse ( better if PS2 or USB )
# Instructions for the first boot
1) enable BIOS to boot from Cd-rom
2) Insert the Cd
3) Take a look at the boot options , just when the image appears , pressing F1
4) ( Write down your desired options if any , then ) Press Enter
5) Login as root , no password

Dariks Boot and Nuke is short DBAN is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers.
DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.
Main features:
- Free.
- Fast. Rapid deployment in emergency situations.
- Easy. Start the computer with DBAN and press the ENTER key.
- Safe. Irrecoverable data destruction. Prevents most forensic data recovery techniques.
Enhancements:
- SysLinux 2.13
- Linux 2.4.33
- LZMA 4.32
- uClibc 0.9.20
- Busybox 0.60.5
- Ncurses 5.3
- WinImage 8.0.8000
- dban-1.0.7 was compiled with Debian gcc-3.3 1:3.3.5-13
- This release is compressed with LZMA, which provides much more free space on the floppy disk. LSI MPT and I2O drivers were added.
- Thanks go to Igor Sobrado for reporting the "5220.22-M" typo.
- Thanks go to Dorina Lanza for reporting a block adjustment error.

boot-dvd project contains a couple of Perl-scripts that can be used to create a custom DVD-ISO image (to be burned), that contains user selected Linux boot/live-CD images (only ISOLINUX boot loader supported) in a handy GRUB menu.
Enhancements:
- Many updates and bugfixes were made.

TCCBOOT project is a boot loader able to compile and boot a Linux kernel directly from its source code.

TCCBOOT is only 138 KB big (uncompressed code) and it can compile and run a typical Linux kernel in less than 15 seconds on a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4.

TCCBOOT is based on the TinyCC compiler, assembler and linker. TinyCC is an experiment to produce a very small and simple C compiler compatible with the GNU C compiler and binary utilities.

TCCBOOT boots the same way as a Linux kernel, so any boot loader which can run a bzImage Linux kernel image can run TCCBOOT. I only tested it with ISOLINUX, but LILO or GRUB should work too.

TCCBOOT reads C or assembly sources from a gzipped ROMFS filesystem stored in an Initial Ram Disk (initrd). It first reads the file boot/tccargs which contains the TinyCC command line (same syntax as the tcc executable). The TinyCC invocation should output one binary image kernel. This image is loaded at address 0x00100000. TCCBOOT then does a jump to the address 0x00100000 in 32 bit flat mode. This is compatible with the ABI of the vmlinux kernel image.

Compilation:

TCCBOOT was only tested with Linux 2.4.26. In order to build TCCBOOT, you must first compile a 2.4.26 kernel because for simplicity TCCBOOT uses some binary files and headers from the Linux kernel. TCCBOOT also needs the source code of TinyCC (tested with TinyCC version 0.9.21). You can modify the Makefile to give the needed paths.

Example:

An "Hello World" ROMFS partition is included (initrd.img). You can rebuild it from the example/ directory. You can test it with the QEMU PC emulator with the qemu-tccboot script.

Kernel compilation:

For your information, the patch linux-2.4.26-tcc.patch gives the necessary modifications to build a Linux kernel with TCCBOOT (NOTE: it is not suffisant to build the kernel with its own Makefiles - I never tried). The corresponding kernel configuration is in file linux-2.4.26-config. Patches are necessary for the following reasons:

- unsupported assembly directives: .rept, .endr, .subsection
- #define __ASSEMBLY__ needed in assembly sources
- static variables cannot be seen from the inline assembly code
- typing/lvalue problems with ? :
- no long long bit fields
- aligned attribute not supported for whole structs, only for fields
- obscur preprocessor bug

Some of these problems could easily be fixed, but I am too lazy now. It is sure that there are still many bugs in the kernel generated by TinyCC/TCCBOOT, but at least it can boot and launch a shell.

U-Boot is a Universal Bootloader project that provides firmware with full source code under GPL.
Many CPU architectures are supported: PowerPC(MPC5xx, MPC8xx, MPC82xx, MPC7xx, MPC74xx, 4xx), ARM(ARM7, ARM9, StrongARM, Xscale), MIPS(4Kc,5Kc), x86.
Enhancements:
Support for new CPUs:
- AMCC 440SP
- ARM 946E
- NetSilicon NS7520
Support for new boards:
- AMCC Luan 440SP
- AMD Pb1x00
- AP1000
- Armadillo HT1070
- Barco SCN
- Barco SVC
- Cogent csb637
- esd CMS700
- esd CPCI2DP
- esd cpci5200
- esd pf5200
- IFM o2dnt
- KwikByte KB920x
- MP2USB
- Sandburst Karef
- Sandburst Metrobox
- Silicon Turnkey eXpress XTc
- TQ Components TQM834x
- TQ Components TQM8541
- TQ Components TQM8555
- Vibren PXA255 IDP
- Support for GCC-4.x
- Support for multiple PHYs
- Support for passing Open Firmware flat trees to the Linux kernel
- Generic 4xx_enet.c driver for all 4xx CPUs
- Uniform support for all AMCC eval boards
- Xilinx Spartan3 family FPGA support
- Major cleanup ARM Integrator boards
- Changed all $(...) variable references into ${...}

gentoo splash theme chooser is a gentoo application to choose a gensplash theme.

You can choose a theme and it it will make a symlink from this theme to default in /etc/splash.

After that it mounts /boot and does the following command:

splash_geninitramfs -v -g /boot/fbsplash -r resolution default

It does not touch grub.conf

There is a Readme included with an example grub.conf and further information. For me it is a handy tool and I hope it will help other gentoo user too.