Speeding up the debian/etch boot, a short report

[a-aa]

a few things to consider.

doing readahead on files does not always improve boot time, but can
considerably improve boot time of applications started after boot (for
example doing readahead on boot stuff (bash/sed/modprobe) X stuff
(X+libs+gdm) firefox/gnome/kde, depending on setup).

replacing bash with dash will help wherever the cpu is the bottleneck
and not the io, which readahead will help with.

Try combining both of the two tests and check your results then :)