Hello everybody!

I treated myself to a "new" (used) laptop which came with a factory install of Windows 7. I do all my work on Ubuntu so I installed it alongside Windows. I installed the 14.04 LTS, 64bit version and installed all suggested updates. Before proceeding with installation of anything else I want to minimize the current boot time of a fresh install. I would like to kindly ask for your help in achieving that.

As I measured it there are four main "delays" during start up:

1. Approximately 6 s from the time the power on button is pressed and the ThinkPad's splash screen appears (I have a Lenovo T410 laptop hence the ThinkPad splash screen).
2. Approximately 5 s during which the ThinkPad splash screen is visible. After it dissapears, GRUB is started.
3. Approximately 18 s from the time GRUB is started to the time Ubuntu splash screen appears. Mind you I have reduced GRUB's wait time to 1 s in its configuration files.
4. App 12 s from the time Ubuntu's splash screen appears to the time at which desktop appears and I can start opening programs.

I am attaching a dmesg output right after boot, a bootchart and a list of startup applications. I also gathered some information about my disk organization and all partitions here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...ganization.zip

I am hoping to reduce at least the times described in points 3 and 4 above although any ideas about how to improve points 1 and 2 will also be warmly welcomed.

For shortening time under 1) I already fiddled around BIOS a bit, removing all unneeded boot devices and enabling fast boot. As for point two I looked for a way to shorten the time during which the ThinkPad splash is shown thinking that it can be done. During that time the system gives the user time to press a button on the laptop to enter BIOS or choose a boot device so I figured this wait time can be adjusted, similarly as that can be done for GRUB. But so far I was not able to find a way to do that or even information if it is even possible.

For shortening time under points 3) and 4) I started going over bootchart's image and googling the processes but soon realized it will take me a very long time to go over them all and decided to ask the community for help. What I did do was disable a few startup applications (Backup Monitor, Chat and Desktop Sharing). But I left the rest in the startup list since they all seemed important after reading about them.

System info:
Lenovo T410
Intel Core i5 M540 @ 2.53GHz x 4
8GB DDR3 RAM

Thank you in advance for all your help. It is much appreciated.

Have a nice one!

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Attached Files

bootTime_dmesg-output_01.txt (66.8 KB, 19 views)

Not that difficult and it does save some power, instead of shutting down why don't you let the laptop sleep or hibernate?

the time it took you to write and compile all that info, you could already have tried to uncheck most of your startup applications, and reboot.

do you really need orca, zeitgeist, onboard, mount helper, pulse audio? only you can answer that.

for a full-fledged ubuntu bloat setup on a not-so-new machine, the boot times sound just fine.

in other (my) words: if you really want fast, use something else than ubuntu.
if you really want to be in control of your system, use something else than ubuntu.