[CentOS] Cemtos 7 : Systemd alternatives ?

[Lamar Owen]

On 07/09/2014 01:00 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
> i find the biggest part of server POST is all the storage and network 
> adapter bios's need to get in there, scan the storage busses, 
> enumerate raids, initialize intel boot agents, and so forth.

I've found that disabling all but the boot device's BIOS works wonders 
and makes installs far happier, with the exception of real hardware RAID 
cards.  The Linux kernel is quite happy doing any and all fibre-channel 
enumeration with the HBA's BIOS turned off.  (All my large storage is FC 
and iSCSI SAN).  And the 'Intel boot agent' only lives long enough to 
PXE boot if I need that.  The 3Ware 9500's I have typically take a bit 
longer and require the BIOS, though, but with a small array that's a few 
tens of seconds, a minute tops. That's one advantage of the Linux 
mdraid......

But our 6950's spend five minutes only on the memory test; that's not 
counting the Dell PERC boot device enumeration and drive spinup.

The fastest booting servers I have are our two pfSense firewalls; I've 
trimmed the BIOS setup to the bone and those boxes reboot in a few tens 
of seconds.  (Yeah, I count a firewall as a server, since it's running 
on server hardware (Intel 5000X-based quad core dual Xeons with 4GB of 
RAM each; does wire-speed with > one million pf table entries on a 1Gb/s 
WAN link) and providing an essential network service to the rest of the 
hosts on the network).

But, point taken, since there's more to a POST than just the memory test.