Fast Boot Firmware - 15 Second Boots

[circus_freak]

Anyone have a heads up on the MAME issue? Since MAME is one of the MAIN things I use the GP2x for, if its flakey, I'll hold off on this upgrade.

Just done the upgrade and MAME seems to be working fine (good job dont think I could get through the day without playing gauntlet!)

 

[halo9]

I'm waiting and watching beofre I commit to changing my firmware. But I will be interested to know if anyone has an answer to these questions.

​

Me too. I've killed one GP2x too many already since November and I'm a bit twitchy now...

 

[Phil]

Oh snap, I bit the bullet and went for it.

OH man this boots fast!

Like flick on, and bam! This is very cool.

 

[thoro]

This is just great - thank you very much!

I put my Poison Green Skin into the dump file, installed the dump & kernel image - and boot time is down to 12 seconds now...

 

[CoinOp]

I think theoddbot should be made Guru for this!

 

[Flavor]

I think theoddbot should be made Guru for this!

He probablly should have been before.

 

[triton]

i will wait a while before jumping in, i need to have ebook reader be able to save (someone needs to fix that anyway) i still have 1.2.1 and i like it but the 30-60 second boots and frequent boot hangs kills me! i must say bravo tho, this sounds absolutly amazing! good job theoddbot

 

[Vimacs]

indeed, he realy should be, but hando is the only one who can do that.

 

[sweetlilmre]

Brilliant!

Worked like a charm, first time, DAMN this is fast.
I had to switch the gp2x on and off several times, just to watch the boot messages


I'm assuming that I shoudn't be too worried about:

"Reading data from NAND FLASH without ECC is not recommended"
"Writing data to NAND FLASH without ECC is not recommended"

Another vote for theoddbot for Guru status!
-(e)

 

[barnesy]

Yes, this is just the first thing that has made some people notice theoddbot - he's done loads of other important things for the gp2x too!

 

[saboteur]

Anybody tell me why this boots so fast - what's different to the stock kernel and does it place any limitations on the GP2X ??

I wonder if GPH are gonna use this in 1.5

I vote theoddbot for guru status and GPH should offer you plenty 'o cash.

 

[Tobriand]

Anybody tell me why this boots so fast - what's different to the stock kernel and does it place any limitations on the GP2X ??

I wonder if GPH are gonna use this in 1.5

I vote theoddbot for guru status and GPH should offer you plenty 'o cash.

​

It's read only. If anything absolutely *needs* to write to the nand, it won't be able to, and will throw a tantrum. So far as I can tell, though, that's the only issue...

 

[djchk]

Rage2x doesn't work with this and Mame seems a bit unstable....do they need to write to nand?

 

[FluffyPanda]

Anybody tell me why this boots so fast - what's different to the stock kernel and does it place any limitations on the GP2X ??

​

It is read-only, the old file system had to initialise a journal to track half completed writes (sort of) and spread writes evenly across the nand (kinda).

I always thought that a journaling filesystem was pretty insane on the built in memory anyway. It still makes sense, but only if you're having the nand hold a /swap, /tmp or /home directory that will be used as on a desktop linux system. The read only nand makes a lot more sense, and should always have been that way to encourage people to program without writing to the nand.

You can still have writable sections on the nand anyway in theory, which might be a good idea for the skin directory and possibly for some kind of settings file.

 

[antidark]

Hermes from gp32spain :

Bueno, pues yo ya se porque no funciona GP2Xpectrum con esta modificacion del kernel.

Basicamente, éste emulador incorpora dos detalles nuevos con respecto a GP2Xengine: la monitorizacion de batería que Waninkoko ha dicho que funciona bien y...

¡El compresor de ejecutables de rlyeh!

Sencillamente, ese es el problema, asi que aquí os subo la version compilada de GP2Xpectrum sin comprimir, que si funciona.

Perhaps the cause is the compressor of executables of ryleh ?

 

[BBTroll]

djchk: If an app is not running, it mean that they are trying to write to the NAND. They shouldn't be doing that anyways.

 

[kegie]

Excuse me for being a linux n00b, but how hard is it to remap the /home, /tmp, /swap dirs to other directories on boot? Is it something I can setup myself by making a new cramfs image and some boot scripting?
It sounds like it should be a pretty simple fix..

Anyway, I am glad that this firmware fix not only improves boot times, but reveals those programs that write to NAND.. I sure don't want games to do that!

 

[guilleml]

Hermes from gp32spain :

Bueno, pues yo ya se porque no funciona GP2Xpectrum con esta modificacion del kernel.

Basicamente, éste emulador incorpora dos detalles nuevos con respecto a GP2Xengine: la monitorizacion de batería que Waninkoko ha dicho que funciona bien y...

¡El compresor de ejecutables de rlyeh!

Sencillamente, ese es el problema, asi que aquí os subo la version compilada de GP2Xpectrum sin comprimir, que si funciona.

Perhaps the cause is the compressor of executables of ryleh ?

​

Well, he says so, he has uploaded an uncompressed working version

 

[z32fairlady]

Just "unpacked" it and flashed the unit.
Wow, what a blaze. Worth the bucks for the PSU.

[And a proudly 1.4 owner ]

However, some n00b questions...
1. If I want to change the skin, do I need to do this by customizing the cramfs image, and "unpack" it back to GP2X again?
2. Once I changed the cramfs and "unpacked" it to GP2X, do I even need to flash the unit once more?

 

[azurege]

Just done the dirty on my GP2x, 12 second boot time, haven't played much on it yet though.

Cheerz mate