Freebsd And the sun x4440

[Mark Saad]

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 1:59 AM, Julian Elischer <julian at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On 5/16/12 5:42 PM, Mark Saad wrote:
>>
>> All
>>  I am setting up 3 sun x4440 with freebsd 7.3 amd64 . The severs have 4x
>> 4-core opterons and 128G of ram each . Once the servers boot they are a good
>> fit for what we are doing and preform well . The odd thing I am seeing is a
>> long delay in boot up . Once in the initial loading of the kernel at the "|"
>> for 1-2 mins . Then again shortly after printing the kernel banner "freebsd
>> 7.3-release etc etc etc" .  This delay is about 1-2 mins as well.  So my
>> question does any one know what I could do to speed up the boot up ? I
>> suspect the first delay is due to a serial  device probe the second is a
>> mystery . also the bios load up time is about 5 mins on this box does anyone
>> have any ideas on speeding that up ?
>
> I'd suspect that all three are some sort of memory probe or test.
> you might also check they are not trying to do a PXE boot first.
>
>
PXE Booting did not make any change in the boot up time.

I feel that that what bz@ noted in
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arch/2011-March/011198.html
 is what I am seeing . This along with some serial port weirdness.

One the one hand I wish sun would release an updated bios for this
server that shows some progress meter on boot up. You
literally stare at the same data on the screen for little over 5  mins
, its a bit maddening . That combined with the memory check freebsd is
doing
can make you easily think there is an issue with the hardware .

-- 
mark saad | nonesuch at longcount.org