Is BOOTWAIT still used? (Was: kernel memory checks on boot vs. boot time)

[Oliver Fromme]

Pan Tsu wrote:
 > Oliver Fromme <olli at lurza.secnetix.de> writes:
 > 
 > [...]
 > > To be honest, I don't think that loader takes so much time.
 > > When you set autoboot_delay="-1" and beastie_disable="YES",
 > > the time spent in loader is negligible.  (I'm assuming that
 > > you also set BOOTWAIT=0 in make.conf, so boot2 doesn't wait
 > > for a keypress either.  I think the default is to wait 3
 > > seconds.)
 > 
 > Is BOOTWAIT still used? A quick grep in sys/boot shows nothing.

You're right, unfortunately.

boot0 still has a configurable timeout which is 10 seconds
by default.  It can be configured via BOOT_BOOT0_TICKS in
make conf (default is 182 because the BIOS ticks run at
18.2 Hz).

However, the 3 seconds delay is hardcoded in boot2.c:

        if (!keyhit(3*SECOND)) {
            load();

I have no idea why it isn't configurable anymore.  Is there
a reason for that?  I'll write a patch unless anybody
objects.

 > Digging history, BOOTWAIT never made its way from sys/i386/boot
 > to sys/boot/i386 and was removed in r58284 around 11y ago.

11 years ago?!?  Time to either update the documentation
or -- better yet --  bring the feature back, I would say.
Being able to shave 3 seconds off the boot time of a HTPC
(among others) is not negligible.

Best regards
   Oliver

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