Bootchart

Bootchart is a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the Linux boot process. Resource utilization and process information are collected during the user-space portion of the boot process and are later rendered in a PNG, SVG or EPS encoded chart.

Embedded use of Bootchart
Several embedded developers have tried to use bootchart to analyze the boot time of embedded products, but there are some problems with using bootchart this way, and there have been several efforts to modify bootchart to make it more useful for embedded situations.

See the following presentations on the topic:
 * bootchart-lite-en.pdf Presentation by Shuuji Miyake of Fujitsu Software Technologies Limited, about bootchart deficiencies in the embedded space, and some ideas for fixing them.
 * also, a call for collaboration on a new project
 * Visualizing Resource Usage During Boot Presentation on 'embootchart' by Matthew Klahn of Motorola, about bootchart deficiencies in the embedded space, and a program (unfortunately never published) to fix them.

Related projects
A related project is a set of System Tap scripts to provide information about boot time. See Bootprobe