ALPHA getting tomuch time at startup

[Rashid Ashraf]

Hi all,

We have couple of COMPAQ ALPHAServer DS20E. One of these machines are taking hours to boot up after a normal shutdown. We normally don't shutdown the servers but some times need to restart due to different reasons.
Can u tell me if it is writing the log files some where for error diagnosis?? The messages file has information only after system bootup. We are using Compaq Tru64 UNIX V5.1A.

Looking for help
Thanks
RMA

[Ivan Ferreira]

You should identify the moment where it stops. Maybe, some service configured to start at boot is not working correctly.

What is the last message do you see after the "long delay"?

Log files are in /var/adm/syslog.dated

[Khairy]

hi rashid,

you could observe the monitor during the server booting up especially when it starting the services. Is ntp is set or do you have nfs mounts?

let us know.

[DCBrown]

Messages and binlog entries are internally cached in a fifo until the boot process is far enough along to dump out the information. If the fifo is too small, then the messages file picks up late or after the boot has essentially completed.

You can increase the internal buffering for messages (and binlog entries, if needed) by changing the /etc/sysconfigtab generic section. For example,

generic:
binlog-buffer-size = 128000
msgbuf_size = 512000

[Pieter 't Hart]

you can try setting the console variable "console=serial" and capture the output with a terminal emulator connected through the serial console port.
This displays more info from the boot process than the graphics console wich only starts after memory tests and "graphics init" on the OCP-display.

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

Slow boots are frequently caused by the server looking for something on the network that is no longer present... NFS mounts are a common culprit...

Cheers,

Rob

[Pieter 't Hart]

apart from the messages file there is(are)
/var/adm/syslog.dated/

You can also try "sysman event_viewer"
wich combines, messages file, binary eventlog and evmlog's

[Rashid Ashraf]

Thanks to all for their values input.

Today noon I restarted the server to give the infroamtion that it shows to update this thread. I restarted the server at 1205hrs and now it is 1750hrs and the time to go home. Till this time, it hasn't started. Following is the information on the screen:

Testing the System.
Testing the Memory.
Testing the Disks.
Testing ei devices.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Loading vmunix...
Loading at xxxxxxxxxxx (Memory locations)

Sizes:
Text: 6891200
Data: 1304384
bss: 1786400

Starting at xxxxxxxx (Memory loacation)

Loading vmunix Symbol table [1706632]

The above is the last line that I am getting. There is a heavy hard disk activity going on but :-(

Please help.

RMA

[Rashid Ashraf]

Please remember that I am not using NFS and DHCP for IP assigning. Also the previous suggested commands are not sowing anything unusual.

Thanks
RMA

[Pieter 't Hart]

could be a file system full or something.

Try booting into single-user mode
boot -fl "s"
see if this boots in a reasonable time
next step do a
bcheckrc
to mount the base filesystems (/ /usr and /var as r/w)
check if you have enough free space on these filesystems.
mount -a
to mount all other filesystems named in fstab (ignore the messages about / /usr and /var)
init 2
to enable network support (from this host not to this host).
init 3
to boot to multi-user mode
or manually execute all scripts /sbin/rc.d/S one at a time
to record what takes so much time