From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 5 22:44:40 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E5101065676 for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2008 22:44:40 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Received: from ezekiel.daleco.biz (southernuniform.com [66.76.92.18]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 09A988FC22 for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2008 22:44:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ezekiel.daleco.biz (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m25MicLC022086; Wed, 5 Mar 2008 16:44:38 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at daleco.biz Received: from ezekiel.daleco.biz ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (ezekiel.daleco.biz [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id NgL6b3iVaEsD; Wed, 5 Mar 2008 16:44:31 -0600 (CST) Received: from archangel.daleco.biz (dsl.daleco.biz [209.125.108.70]) by ezekiel.daleco.biz (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m25MiSkG022082; Wed, 5 Mar 2008 16:44:29 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Message-ID: <47CF2246.5050007@daleco.biz> Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:44:22 -0600 From: Kevin Kinsey User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20080213 SeaMonkey/1.1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bill Moran References: <20080305154351.fc53a07b.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <20080305171739.1f51a11a.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <20080305171739.1f51a11a.wmoran@potentialtech.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Daniel Feenberg , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: faster booting X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:44:40 -0000 Bill Moran wrote: >>>> So, is there advice anywhere about speeding up the boot process? It >>>> appears that most of the 1 minute 45 seconds to boot our system is wait >>>> time for checking the existence of non-existant hardware and would not be >>>> appreciable reduced with a faster CPU or disk. Are there kernel options >>>> that we could use to avoid this checking? Would recompiling the kernel in >>>> some specialized way help? Would pico-bsd be faster? >>>> >>>> About the only thing I can find is to reduce the 10 second boot screen >>>> delay - but we need to cut more than 30 seconds. >>>> >>>> The server is statically configured but the clients obtain network >>>> configuration from dhcp and pxeboot with nfs mounted root directories. >>>> Clients are FreeBSD and Linux, and we are not eager to give up pxeboot as >>>> it has greatly simplified maintainance. >>>> >>>> Any suggestions, pointers much appreciated. >>> Three things I can think of: >>> * The 10 sec boot delay, which you already mentioned >>> * Make sure the wait time for SCSI devices is a low as reliably works. >>> If it only has SCSI disks, this could probably very short, 1 sec or so >>> * Recompile your kernel removing any devices that don't exist in your >>> hardware. >>> >>> I'm not buying this, however. My laptop boots in ~30 seconds with a >>> mostly stock kernel. Please provide specific details as to what's >>> slowing it down. Are you sure it's not a slow BIOS? Many of the Dell >>> systems we have take several minutes with BIOS self-checks before the >>> OS even starts to boot. >> The BIOS time isn't terrible - BTX shows up on the console within 15 >> seconds. The major delays happen when the last console message is about >> atapci: (25 seconds) and ad2: (15 seconds). > > Funky. That's a Looong time to wait for an ATA controller to determine > whether or not their's a disk attached. Do you have an ad2? If not, > you might want to check the BIOS to see if there's an option to disable > that particular part of the ATA chain to see if that speeds FreeBSD's > probe up. Let's be sure of this, though; are we actually talking about an ATA controller issue? The phrase "last console message" doesn't necessarily mean it's the ATA controller, but whatever is *next* in the bootup process, AFAICT, *after* the probe of /dev/ad2, which, on my systems is the mounting of the root filesystem. OTOH, turning off BIOS probes for disks that don't exist is a good idea, IMHO. Kevin Kinsey