[K12OSN] Need Help

[Rob Owens]

On Sat, Jul 07, 2007 at 07:32:30PM -0400, "Terrell Prudé Jr." wrote:
> Actually, booting off the CD isn't going to affect speed very much at
> all.  The reason is that the EtherBoot file is so small--32KB to
> 36KB--that it'll take as much time for the CD to spin up as it would to
> read that little file from a floppy.  Now, hard disk, that's a different
> story.  But even then, the file's so small that--fortunately--it doesn't
> matter that much.
> 
> Also remember, once the EtherBoot image is loaded, you're then
> TFTP-booting across the network.  The floppy's out of the picture at
> that point.
> 
> --TP

When it takes the LTSP system about 35 seconds to boot up, I consider
a few seconds of time savings in reading the Etherboot file to be
significant.  Admittedly, I've never timed the difference between a boot
floppy and a boot CD, but I just recently started using CDs and I
perceive it to be significantly faster (a few seconds, I'd say).  

On the machines I've tested, the CD barely even spins up.  Maybe that's
specific to my particular cd drives, or maybe it's because the Etherboot
image is so small--it's read before the cd spins up to full speed?

I guess I'm gonna have to get out my stopwatch today...

-Rob