Need to fast boot our RHEL 6.0 installation.

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Hi,

We are using a legacy hardware Pentium-M (1.8 Ghz) based, with ide CompactFlash disk, 1.5 Gb RAM, LVDS display, ethernet, mouse, keyboard in an HMI environment. Our application is taking 120 secs from RHEL grub menu to start-up. We are using the run-level 3 of Sys-V-Init i.e. default with RHEL6.

We want to reduce the application start-up timings to 90 secs, can u ps. guide us with tips and solutions to achieve the same.

Let me know if any additional information is needed by you.

Regards,
Abhijeet Satam.

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Hello Abhijeet,

There is not much to go on, when you do not tell us what services or applications you start during boot time.

First run chkconfig --list and look for services that get started, but you do not need.

When in doubt post a question under this subject, so we can help you.

Regards,

Jan Gerrit Kootstra

Hi Jan Gerrit,

Thank for your reply.

We are using the following services in run-level 3: abrtd atd cpuspeed haldaemon irqbalance messagebus network sshd sysstat udev-post

Ps advise further resolution.

Regards, Abhijeet Satam.

Hi Abhijeet,

You can check what happens during boot times with sudo cat /var/log/boot.log.
Also check out what you may find in /var/log/dmesg and in /var/log/messages. :)

Regards,
Christian

Hi Christian,

Thanks for your reply.

I have edit this post attaching boot.log, dmesg.log and messages.zip

Ps have a look at the same.

Regards, Abhijeet Satam.

You're welcome, Abhijeet ! :)

I think the main problem is the low-frequency CPU and the very small amount of RAM you have.

Regards,
Christian

Any suggestions, to help my situation. Please.

Hi Abhijeet,

Unfortunately I don't have a good idea how to improve your situation, the thing is that you are using very old stuff.
Hardware and operating system, both are not really "the latest and greatest" - eventually Jan Gerrit has an idea. :)

Regards,
Christian

I agree with your viewpoint, but my boss feels the contrary and we have to support this legacy product we manufactured. Any way I will wait for Jan Gerrit's reply.

Regards, Abhijeet Satam.

Hi Christian,

Well I have to admit, not much to fix here.

If Abhijeet's company would use VMware, KVM or Hyper-V, physical to virtual migration might help.

If /etc/rc.local does not contain a lot of commands that might not be useful, we are stuck.

Does the hardware use a lot of swapping? If so, some extra RAM might help, if possible.

Regards,

Jan Gerrit Kootstra

Thanks for checking and confirming that there's not much we can do, Jan Gerrit ... that's what I assumed.
We are stuck ... just wanted to get sure and you're definitely right : some extra RAM might help indeed ! :)

Regards,
Christian

Here is one issue from the logfiles that may reduce some boot time

udev: renamed network interface eth1 to eth1-eth0

udev: renamed network interface eth0 to eth0-eth2

udev: renamed network interface eth1-eth0 to eth0

udev: renamed network interface eth2 to eth1

udev: renamed network interface eth0-eth2 to eth2

So try to set the correct udev rules.

Regards,

Jan Gerrit Kootstra

Hi Abhijith,

Be aware that Christian''s advise to replace the hardware and upgrade the OS if possible, is a much better aproch.

Regards,

Jan Gerrit

There probably isn't a great deal you can do in software here.

Try setting a performance governor with tuned daemon, though I expect that will only make a difference after boot.

You could try disable all the power saving stuff in the BIOS. The CPU is only running at 1.4GHz from your logs. If it's a 1.8GHz part then the speed is limited.

Your Intel 855GM chipset can take 2GiB RAM if you can find it, the extra 512MiB could help speed things up.

You're running the very first RHEL6 kernel 2.6.32-71.el6 so trying a later kernel could be worth a try, there could be some performance improvement which helps things. Upgrading the whole OS might be a good idea to try.

However in my experience it'll be the CF storage causing most of the delay. You're using a SanDisk Extreme card which can read up to 120 MiB/sec, but as per your GRUB kernel line, you need to force the controller to PIO4 which limits max speed to 16.7MiB/sec. That's going to hold any system back.

You would probably be better booting off the internal 100GiB Toshiba laptop drive which is probably more latent but can at least operate in a proper Ultra DMA mode for faster throughput.

Ideally, get an SSD which gives you the best of both worlds. I expect this will be the biggest thing you could do to improve boot time.

If you get an SSD, try both elevator=noop on the GRUB kernel line to avoid the I/O scheduler, or elevator=deadline to try complete reads within a specified time limit.

Thanks Jamie for reply.

Yes you are right its 1.4 Ghz CPU and will try to disable power saving modes in Bios.

Previously RHEL would take 3min 50 secs to start our application. It would try different PIO modes and finally select for PIO Mode 4, thats the reason we forced PIO mode 4 and saved 2 mins of startup.

Swithcing to HDD is not an allowed option, its used as supplementary storage device.

Due to size, legacy and maintainability constraints switching to SSD is not a option.

Regards, Abhijeet Satam.

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