L-Class takes quite long to boot !! is it normal ?

[Stefan Saliba]

I have a common problem on L-class servers. They take loads of time to boot. They take very long time in a state pdc_alloc_mem ...... What would this server be doing at this state and why does it take so long. I noticed that the larger the RAM the more wait time

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Correct, because of the testing the more hardware you have, the longer it takes to boot especially if you have plenty RAM...
There is a way to bypass some tests (RAM for example) to shorten the reboot time, I remembered on K class you would do this at IPL...
Unfortunately Im still on my IBM SP2s migrations at the moment and cannot access my HP doc ( there maybe a fast reboot option on L/N class), but thats the way to look for reducing reboot time

All the best

Victor

[Patrick Wessel]

Stefan,

When the "alloc_pdc_pages : Relocating PDC from?" message appears is the task of PDC reallocation already done. Usually is the next step that the kernel initializes the IO tree. That may take a while, especially when you have a flaky SCSI or Fibre Channel connections.

Victors explanation about the memory part is just perfect. If you don't want the memory been tested you can switch fast boot on in the Boot Console Handler. That safes time during boot, but bad DIMMs are not identified and deconfigured.