Need to fast boot our RHEL 6.0 installation.
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.
Attachments
Responses
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 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
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
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.
Welcome! Check out the Getting Started with Red Hat page for quick tours and guides for common tasks.
