Optimising system boot up time

[Henry Quek]

I have a HP-UX 9.x system which is configured with a HP-UX server and several other HP-RTs booting up from it through the VME backplane networking. The RTs will boot from the bootp and file server one at a time after a fix delay interval of about 30 seconds.
Does anyone know how the system boot up time can be optimised further? I've tried booting from the 10BaseT ethernet network instead of the VME backplane, but the performance didn't seem to have any significant improvement. Is this the best I can do with the HP743 card?

[Laurent Menase]

Hello Henry,

Are you trying to optimise the overall bootup time from power on to end of boot?

Did you already enabled the fast boot at PDC level?

How long does it take between HPRT find the kernel and is running?
How long does it take between power on and inetd is started on HPUX?
How long does it take between HPUX kernel boot, and HPUX search start?
How long does hprt search for a kernel?
How long does it take between the start of search, and the start of the ISL?
How long does it take to load the HPRT kernel?

Where do you see time when the system is only waiting? This may be place where you can optimize.

the use of the BPR in place of the BPN could be looked at, depending where the time is taken? It can improve the kernel load time.

[Dave La Mar]

Henry -
Another place to look when optimizing is in the /etc/rc.log.
Look for any processes looking to start up yet failing for whatever reason.
Often you will find some trying to starting or indeed starting that have no use or value in your environment.

Happy hunting and best of luck.

Regards,

dl