Ubuntu Done Quick

[John Richard Moser]

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How fast can Ubuntu be installed, theoretically?  It takes me about
45-50 minutes on an AMD64 with serial ATA hard drive; my CD drive has no
DMA, but setting -c1 -u1 (32 bit IO, unmasked interrupts) with hdparm is
just as fast as DMA (possibly faster).

In theory, a few shortcuts could be taken:

 - Auto-enable -c1 -u1 with hdparm on the target hard disk and CD drive
 - The kernel could keep cached the directory tree of the ISO9660 FS if
it uses less than 10% of the memory (kernel hack for specific purpose ;)
 - Upon starting the installer, the initial stages could be loaded; then
during partitioning a quick 'find' could run through the CD and start
nabbing directory information up into kernel cache, during partitioning
(kill this when partitioning is done)
 - The kernel could read-ahead several blocks of a directory when
reading from it, automatically, to keep it cached and reduce file system
reads (more kernel hackage)
 - If networking is detected, then the installer could parallel download
updated packages (security updates!) and copy others off the CD into the
tmpfs or to the target hard disk
 - Copy things into tmpfs from the CD while installing (modified apt
understanding this); go until available memory; stuff that needs to be
installed after rebooting goes right to disk (really modified apt to
understand this)
 - When finished downloading the updated packages, start using the
network to parallel-download other packages; CD is slow, network is
slow, disk and tmpfs are fast; copy from 2xSLOW to 1xFAST
 - Package files are deleted immediately after installation to free up
memory during install to download/copy more there
 - Package dependency trees are graphed so that parallel installation
occurs and thus while asking questions about i.e. configuring X or Exim,
other packages are installing

In the end, what do you think the overall time would be?  20 minutes?
Most of the time is wasted as stuff gets copied off the CD reeeeallly
slow during install. . . .

Anyway, these aren't really serious suggestions; I'm just wondering what
the fastest theoretical speed run of installing Ubuntu would be with
pure software hackery.

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    Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be
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                                                 -- Eric Steven Raymond
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