very slow boot (newbie)

[Kevin Kinsey]

Barnaby Scott wrote:
>>
>> The fact that the operating system knows what the machine is called,
>> does not necessarily mean that the name is in the DNS.  You can put an
>> entry in your /etc/hosts file (take a look at the file for the format),
>> which will allow sendmail and other daemons to start.
> 
> OK, I looked in /etc/hosts and only 127.0.0.1 localhost appears there. 
> How do I put another entry in here though, when I don't know in advance 
> the IP address that will be allocated to this machine by the DHCP server 
> (provided by my router)? The odd thing is that the system knows exactly 
> what IP address has been assigned, because I can see that transaction 
> taking place during the boot sequence long before the point where it 
> stalls.
> 
>   You should also
>> check that your hostname is in the DNS.  You might find something like
>> DynDNS or ZoneEdit useful if your machine is on a dynamically assigned
>> domestic range, such as you'd get from NTL or Telewest.
> 
> Do I really want it in the DNS? I'm not sure exactly what this means in 
> the context of my little network, but if it means people outside my 
> network being able to look for my computer by name, I certainly don't 
> want that. In case it is important, I should say that during 
> installation I was asked to configure my NIC and that was where I put a 
> hostname, but I *didn't* enter a domain name. Should I have put 
> something here - if so, what?
> 

Lack of name resolution can cause several things to be
"slow" during booting, but SendMail is the chief culprit.
Do you need SendMail?  If this is a workstation on a LAN,
don't you have another SMTP server available for your
mail client?

If you don't need sendmail, I'd do this:

	sendmail_enable="NONE"

in /etc/rc.conf, and reboot.  Good chance things'll
speed up.

We are still just shooting in the dark here.  Are there no
log messages or additional indicators of what the trouble may be?


Kevin Kinsey

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