Retropie fastboot?

AndrewH

Hi all, not sure if this is the right section for this, but I hope so...

Browsing reddit today, I came across this thread about a project to get a Raspberry Pi 3 to boot up in less than 2 seconds. Here's the referenced blog post about it.

While I appreciate that this is not particularly relevant for owners of bartop systems or console type systems, it could be very beneficial in turning something like the RetroFlag GPi case into something viable (I have one, but since it takes about 2 minutes to boot up, I don't use it, instead using a BittBoy PocketGo 2)

Anyway, just throwing it out there as a suggestion - unfortunately I don't know nearly enough Linux stuff to do more than that :-/

mitu

The page is interesting - but the setup presented there it's unusable to run more than 1 application (i.e. a single application). The Linux kernel has been stripped of all functionality - there's no sound support, no USB or HID devices support, no network support - and there's practically no OS underneath. It's good for a single purpose app device (like a digital frame application), but can't be used for something like RetroPie.

quicksilver

Make sure you turn off wait for wifi connection in raspi-config. It greatly reduced boot time on my pi zero. My boot time on my gpi is about 40 secs.

mitu

As an ad-hoc test, you can boot a Pi 4 in about 6 seconds:

Startup finished in 1.050s (kernel) + 4.980s (userspace) = 6.030s

That from start to EmulationStation starting up.

All it takes is to disable all unnecessary services - networks, splashscreen, bluetooth, file shares, sshd and have the configuration 'Wait for network boot' set to off (via raspi-config).

Didn't test on a Pi3, but it could be longer since the CPU is a bit slower and probably the SD card access speed is reduced.

lilbud

@quicksilver When you disable "Wait for Wifi" does it not connect at all? or does it wait for ES to boot and then connect?

AndrewH

@lilbud the second one. I've disabled "wait for wifi", and my system with a Pi4 (manual install) takes 40 seconds to boot, following which it is accessible over wifi. I didn't record the boot time before making that change, so not really sure how much faster it is.

IceChes1

@mitu you're right. I have a vanilla Pi 4 build and it takes under ten seconds to boot. There are no splashscreens, no waiting for Wi-Fi, no BT, etc.

lostless

@lilbud basically it’ll just continue to boot then next part of the os without waiting for a WiFi signal and will connect when it’s ready in the background . Without it, It’ll wait either for an connection or just timeout and then continue to boot. No need to to have a solid WiFi connection on a retro pie setup. Where you would want it is if your project requires internet or WiFi to run your project so it has WiFi before the whole OS boots.