Aleksey Tsalolikhin atsaloli.tech@gmail.com wrote:
(a) account for the difference in the binaries, and (b) see if something else is different that I can make the same to get the mkfs.ext3 time down to 15 sec on both systems. Solving (a) should shed light on (b). Any ideas?
Look into prelinking (man prelink). A prelinker from /etc/cron.daily that changes the binaries with an aim to speed up execution.