Boot Time

[aaronson911]

I was watching the video of the Pandora on you tube and I was quite sure but it seemed to take a little bit of time to boot up. As a gp2x user one of the frustrating things about using it is was the boot time. Does anybody have any idea on the boot time of a Pandora? Thanks

 

[PoisonedV]

The boot time is pretty long for a console, but when it's in your pocket 99 percent of the time it will be in low, low energy power saving/hibernation type mode and it only takes a moment or two to resume

 

[Chip]

The OS is still being tweaked, so the boot time could change a bit one way or the other before everything is finished, but it will be roughly what you saw in the videos.

Boot time is pretty much irrelevant though, as you will hardly ever turn it off, and will therefore hardly ever need to boot up. The Pandora will last for a couple months in Suspend to RAM mode, and essentially forever in suspend to disk mode. You'll only ever have to do a full reboot after major OS upgrades.

 

[WizardStan]

You know how, on the PSP, if you flip the power switch it just "shuts off" and then flip it again and it comes right back on? After the first boot sequence, that's how it'll work. You'll need a fresh reboot if you update the firmware, but otherwise it'll be rare.
And unlike the PSP, where if you leave it "off" for a week, the battery won't run dead.

 

[aaronson911]

OK, sounds good. Thanks for the prompt replies.

 

[Zarneth]

Boot time is pretty much irrelevant though, as you will hardly ever turn it off, and will therefore hardly ever need to boot up. The Pandora will last for a couple months in Suspend to RAM mode, and essentially forever in suspend to disk mode. You'll only ever have to do a full reboot after major OS upgrades.
Sure it's relevant. Think of all the crashes from badly programmed home-brew apps.

 

[EvilDragon]

Boot time is pretty much irrelevant though, as you will hardly ever turn it off, and will therefore hardly ever need to boot up. The Pandora will last for a couple months in Suspend to RAM mode, and essentially forever in suspend to disk mode. You'll only ever have to do a full reboot after major OS upgrades.
Sure it's relevant. Think of all the crashes from badly programmed home-brew apps.

It's Linux. If an app crashes, it shouldn't affect the whole Linux system.

 

[GuSec]

Boot time is pretty much irrelevant though, as you will hardly ever turn it off, and will therefore hardly ever need to boot up. The Pandora will last for a couple months in Suspend to RAM mode, and essentially forever in suspend to disk mode. You'll only ever have to do a full reboot after major OS upgrades.
Sure it's relevant. Think of all the crashes from badly programmed home-brew apps.

It's Linux. If an app crashes, it shouldn't affect the whole Linux system.

It's easy to forget but it's so true. The only thing I've managed to crash is the X-sever, but that's easy to reboot.

 

[marshal]

It shouldn't effect the whole system... usually. I guess overall it should be stable.

But I am sure there will be some time you run into a bug or something doesn't work properly and even if you could restart the service (...) from the console, most will probably just reboot the device. I already had to reboot my nokia IT for a number of reasons (not that often though).

What I really would like to know is if suspend is already working on the current software.

 

[ledow]

It's easy to forget but it's so true. The only thing I've managed to crash is the X-sever, but that's easy to reboot.

Pfft. Amateurs. Give it to me for a second and I'll make the thing crash.

I would imagine the most likely cause for a crash would be bad DSP programming, which is something that a lot of the power-apps that people want will do. Mess up the DSP and you mess up the graphics and require a reboot - and that's completely outside the realm of things that Linux is designed to prevent or recover from.

Linux is crashable - I've done it several times on both tainted and untainted kernels. It's incredibly easy if you do things like run binary graphics drivers as root. You might not halt the system, but you can make it unusable until you reboot. It is much *harder* to crash Linux in general (I've managed to crash clean installs of Vista within seconds, before I even installed any third-party drivers or software) but it's certainly not unheard of.

I've even crashed the GP2X while developing - it's amazingly easy to do because you are running as root and the slightest cock-up means you start playing with protected RAM, or allocating too much RAM, or writing over device space etc. and the mechanisms to cope with that aren't always enabled in embedded kernels.

I would hope that boot time is not *so* much an issue, but to say that you'll hardly ever have to do a long boot is crazy-talk, especially in usage cases where people run their batteries down, run complex DSP code, etc.

 

[BaDToaD]

I'm so glad you're not one of my users ledow

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

@ledow:

I think what Chip really means is during normal use you will not have to boot every time you turn the device on compared to the GP2X or Wiz that always requires a full boot every time you use it. Granted there will be times that require a hard reset, but I think during everyday use those will be rather rare instances. Especially when Homebrew, Apps and Emulation versions improve and bugs are stamped on

 

[Klaus]

As ledow said, it's not that uncommon that a system will hang until you press reset, or ssh to the machine from a different computer to fix things. By "not that uncommon" I mean, it happens to me a few times a year with an average uptime of about a month. The introduction of kernel-based mode-setting should make it even rarer (given support in the graphics driver).

 

[GuSec]

Actually, when I think about it I think i look forward to booting the Pandora. Seeing that wonderful penguin-kernel wake to life end start pouring messages all over the screen and giving birth to small deamons... it must truly be wonderful. Booting is something your used to when powering up full sized desktop computers, not something that generally looks like a DS, so it's a bit attractive tech-wise...
Is this just me being silly or do anyone agree?

 

[r00tw00t]

Actually, when I think about it I think i look forward to booting the Pandora. Seeing that wonderful penguin-kernel wake to life end start pouring messages all over the screen and giving birth to small deamons... it must truly be wonderful. Booting is something your used to when powering up full sized desktop computers, not something that generally looks like a DS, so it's a bit attractive tech-wise...
Is this just me being silly or do anyone agree?

Hahaha, I agree Very poetic +1

 

[aaronson911]

I don't know if this is completely relative in this thread but does any one have an idea of differences in boot time of a wiz and a gp2x.

 

[craigix]

The Pandora boot time is currently similar to the GP2X, however it is an area that will be looked at and the time will be hacked down to as little as possible, and then of course some users might tweak that down even more - and we will then use those changes.

Beauty of being open.

 

[RavenX]

Just enter the following short string of characters at any shell prompt and see how soon you are rebooting:
){ :& };:

And on that note, how easy is it to reboot a Pandora? Is there a pressable soft reset button or key combo that still works even when a system is frozen solid, or do you just pop the battery?

 

[GuSec]

QUOTE

Just enter the following short string of characters at any shell prompt and see how soon you are rebooting:
[Freeze computer code]

And on that note, how easy is it to reboot a Pandora? Is there a pressable soft reset button or key combo that still works even when a system is frozen solid, or do you just pop the battery?


Evil...
If it's frozen you can of course still shut the power by holding it. But, this is a programmable feature, the button can be remapped because it's software controlled. A post you may find interesting, from MW himself:
QUOTE
The power switch is software controlled. It is connected to the power management chip and can be read by the OMAP through an I2C interface. It can fire an interrupt when pressed or it can be software polled (depending on what the kernel would like to do). It can also be set as a hardware failsafe and if you hold it down for a programmable number of seconds, it kills the entire system power. This is useful if Linux should lock up and you have no way to power it off in software, because this feature is pure hardware.

In the case of the Pandora, that it not often necessary unless you want to force it off completely, but there are other easy ways to use the power switch to reset the board if you just need it to reboot. Here are the configurations:

- Hold down MENU button and press POWER switch = HARD RESET
- Hold down MENU and START buttons while pressing POWER switch = HARD RESET into "peripheral boot mode" (used to load code from SD card, UART or USB). Those two blue wires on the dev kit PCBs hold the MENU and START buttons at ground potential so the board always comes up in this mode for code development.

I know I have explained most of this in other topics, but they do tend to get buried. smile.gif

Link: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showt...;p=623247&#

 

[Chip]

If it's frozen you can of course still shut the power by holding it. But, this is a programmable feature, the button can be remapped because it's software controlled.
That is not entirely accurate. Regular power modes are software controlled and programmable. The emergency power down (hold power button for several seconds) is not. This is a feature that is built into the hardware and cannot be disabled or programmed to another button. The shutdown command is tied directly into the power supply, so no matter how badly you've locked up the system, the power shuts off.