I have a jumpstart server which serves out different flash images. Our
v490 systems jumpstart and complete in about 15 minutes. The v440
systems take hours, only installing about 1mb/sec during jumpstart. I
have swapped the network cables between the v490s and the v440s with no
change in throughput. Also, I have verified that all cards and switch
ports are set to 100/full.

Not only is the transfer of the flash image extremely slow but the file
system creation in the initial phase of the jumpstart installation is
extremely slow, taking on average about 60 seconds to create a 40GB ufs
filesystem.

It almost seems to be a disk throughput problem but to this magnitude
does not make sense.

Has anyone else experianced this type of issue when jumpstarting a v440?

Also, I wanted to add that I have modifed the jumpstart process to
start the network services (for telnet) and I will be connecting to the
box while the jumpstart process is running and post any more data I
discover.

Now that I can log into the target system during the jumpstart I have
been able to verify that it is indeed disk throughput which is slowing
down the system.

Both the v490 and the v440 systems are mirrored via disksuite during
the jumpstart procedure which results in an immediate resync of the
metadevices. It appears that the v490 has enough oomph to not be
affected by this process but perhaps the v440 cannot cope.

The next experiment is to install the v440 without mirroring the disks
and see if it is any faster.

Ok, here's the conclusion. It was indeed the disksuite mirroring which
slowed down the jumpstart so much. So if I want to jumpstart a v440
and mirror it at the same time I guess I just have to deal with the
delay. In an urgent sutiation though it would be faster to jumpstart
it then mirror it manually, it would lower the time by hours.

In article <1122661682.708045.104340@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups .com>,
chadmjohn <chadmjohn@gmail.com> wrote:
>Ok, here's the conclusion. It was indeed the disksuite mirroring which
>slowed down the jumpstart so much. So if I want to jumpstart a v440
>and mirror it at the same time I guess I just have to deal with the
>delay. In an urgent sutiation though it would be faster to jumpstart
>it then mirror it manually, it would lower the time by hours.
>


errr, within jumpstart __proper__ one can set up a profile
which sets up mirrors. i prefer to partition disks by cylinders
and so i don't use sun's mirroring technique. i put together
/etc/lvm/md.tab files and some scripts to get things one-way
mirrored during the jumpstart, and let the sync with other
side of mirror occur later. which is what you're
doing now--i followed your point.

it makes sense that writing to two disks would take longer.

but you're using flash archives, right? i don't know how
flash compares with "true jumpstarting".

FWIW.

--
Jay Scott 512-835-3553 gl@arlut.utexas.edu
Head of Sun Support, Sr. Operating Systems Specialist
Applied Research Labs, Computer Science Div. S224
University of Texas at Austin