when i startup linux, i see the service rc.hotplug for hardware detection, and what I want to know is, is it safe to disable this service from starting up, mainly because it is the only service that takes too damn long (around a full minute or so to start) , and i hate waiting that long. If I disable this service from starting up, will my current hardware that linux found not work anymore? Or if i needed to add new hardware, would I need this service?

From what I know, Hotplug is a service that automaticaly detects and configures hardware. It takes a while to start because of the time it takes to probe hardware and configure it. If you Disable Hotplug it your Hardware will not be automaticaly updated at every boot.

predator.hawk, local slack freak.

On 2.4.x disabling Hotplug is barable. When you get into 2.6.x and udev (automatic /dev content creation) territory you are pretty much screwed without Hotplug.

On a different tangent:
Y does it take so long for your hotplug? On my Pentium II 300Mhz it takes several seconds.

well im using the 2.4.26 , and im relatively new to linux, and right now i seem to have all the hardware i need, i don't really see myself adding anything else anytime soon, but im still unclear of what exactly will happen if I disable it, or if thats not really recommend it, is there any way to speed it up, cause it really does just take too long

On my Pentium 4 2.8Ghz, it takes 45 seconds or so. Oddly enough, my Pentium 166Mhz is about the same.

my system is a AMD K6-II 450Mhz with 448MB of ram, two hard drives, a 12 and a 19GB , linux is installed on the 19GB which is the slave, not master. Perhaps linux is running the second drive in PIO mode , rather than DMA (which is another thing i need to check, and see how i can see what devices are in DMA mode, and how to designate devices to DMA mode to possibly speed things up a bit)

the hotplug service takes almost a minute and few seconds to run

May be it's faster for me cause I run 2.6.x? It seriosly takes 3-8 seconds.

Pentium II 300Mhz
Intel 440chipset.
PCI Radeon 9100
ISA Soundblaster Awe
PCI 3Com 905 net card.

nothing fancy, still...

Maybe what you could try this:

1) boot up with hotplug enabled
2) "lsmod" to see what modules are loaded. Write them down.
3) Make sure those modules are listed in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules. Read the file, you'll understand the format.
4) "chmod -x /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug" to disable hotplug.
5) "chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.modules" to make sure rc.modules is run at boot time.
6) "reboot"
7) "lsmod" to make sure the same modules got loaded as last time.
8) If something is missing, add it to /etc/rc.d/rc.modules
9) Keep rebooting and adding until you get it right.

As long as the hardware doesn't change, that should work for you. Be amazed at your new boot speed. You might want to also check out this thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=221874 . there are a few more tips for speeding up the boot process. Use at your own risk.

You can safely disable rc.hotplug with the 2.6.x.x kernel as long as you also disable rc.udev.

It's around 8-10 seconds with my 2.4.27 kernel and Pentium 3 with 550MHz, still going to try shilo's tip because I'm not really someone who regularly buys new hardware, so I guess I can do without hotplug.