[CentOS] Performing post-installation setup tasks - for 75 minutes

[Pete Biggs]

On Thu, 2019-02-28 at 18:19 +0000, Gary Stainburn wrote:
> I'm doing a new install, and everything seems to have gone fine apart from the 
> incredible amount of time it's taken.
> 
> It does have 6 x  4TB drives in RAID6 and I am installing from a USB DVD drive 
> as I had no SATA ports left, but this is getting rediculous.
> 
> I chose a simple install (the one above file and print server) and added 
> Postgresql but that was about it.
> 
> It took over 5 hours to do the install and at 16:50 it changed to
> 
> Performing post-installation setup tasks.  That was 85 minutes ago.  The HDD 
> light keeps flashing, but other than that (and the circle swirling) there 
> doesn't seem to be any activity.
> 
> Is this normal and can I check to see if it is actually doing something?
> 

Just as an added bit of information (because I see you are getting avc
issues as well).

I often see this when using Intel firmware raid - it basically comes
down to the initialisation of the RAID being a quite long process and
if initialisation and installation is happening at the same time
everything fights for disk bandwidth. A new installation on a new 1 Tb
RAID 1 can take 4 or 5 hours.

I usually just let it get on with its stuff and I come back in a few
hours (I've got plenty of other things to do!). Sometimes, if I know
I'll have to watch the install or if I'm trying new things, I'll boot
into a live CD and let the RAID initialisation happen there.

P.