While perusing the Linux change list, I noticed that boot tracing was introduced in the 2.6.28 kernel:
“The purpose of this tracer is to helps developers to optimize boot times: it records the timings of the initcalls. Its aim is to be parsed by the scripts/bootgraph.pl tool to produce graphics about boot inefficiencies, giving a visual representation of the delays during initcalls. Users need to enable CONFIG_BOOT_TRACER, boot with the “initcall_debug” and “printk.time=1” parameters, and run “dmesg | perl scripts/bootgraph.pl > output.svg” to generate the final data.”
This is pretty sweet, and I will definitely have to test this out once I finish up Redhat cluster suite + GFS testing!