Libguestfs appliance boot in under 600ms

$ ./run ./utils/boot-benchmark/boot-benchmark
Warming up the libguestfs cache ...
Running the tests ...

test version: libguestfs 1.33.28
 test passes: 10
host version: Linux moo.home.annexia.org 4.4.4-301.fc23.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Mar 4 17:42:42 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
    host CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5600U CPU @ 2.60GHz
     backend: direct               [to change set $LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND]
        qemu: /home/rjones/d/qemu/x86_64-softmmu/qemu-system-x86_64 [to change set $LIBGUESTFS_HV]
qemu version: QEMU emulator version 2.5.94, Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard
         smp: 1                    [to change use --smp option]
     memsize: 500                  [to change use --memsize option]
      append:                      [to change use --append option]

Result: 575.9ms ±5.3ms

There are various tricks here:

1. I’m using the (still!) not upstream qemu DMA patches.
2. I’ve compiled my own very minimal guest Linux kernel.
3. I’m using my nearly upstream "crypto: Add a flag allowing the self-tests to be disabled at runtime." patch.
4. I’ve got two sets of non-upstream libguestfs patches 1, 2
5. I am not using libvirt, but if you do want to use libvirt, make sure you use the very latest version since it contains an important performance patch.

Previously