5 minutes to boot

[hat22]

Hi all,

 

For some reason, my server’s boot times are currently 5 mins long. I can see that disk 2 has a reallocated sector count in “pre-fail”. However, based on the RAW Value, this has only happened once and isn’t increasing.

 

I’m not sure that this would cause a 5min boot anyway.

 

I’ve attached a zip file of the diagnostic data. Can anyone help me figure out why my boot times are so long please.

 

Thank you in advance for any help.

tower-diagnostics-20190130-1033.zip

[Squid]

Did you grab the diagnostics via the WebUI?  If so, the time elapsed from start to finish of the log was 58 seconds

[hat22]

Hi Squid, yes I got it via the WebUI. I set a timer from the point at which I pressed the power button on the server to the point at which the shares were accessible in windows 7. This came out at 5mins.

 

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by hat22

[Squid]

Do you mean the time that the shares "appeared" in explorer?  Doesn't mean much, as Windows doesn't poll constantly looking for network devices.

 

Probably after the minute it took to boot up, the shares were accessible by either entering in the server's name or IP address

[hat22]

I kept closing explorer, reopening and entering the server's name every 20 seconds.

 

[electron286]

If timing from pressing the power button, I am wondering how much time is actually spent from when the Unraid image is loaded till the shares are available.  I have a few server hardware unraid installs that I think take close to 6 or 7 minutes just to go through the disk controllers and then start the normal MB Bios memchecks...

 

  I also have some installs that load the image from USB in about 10 seconds, and others that take a good 2 minutes just to load the image from USB.  Add to those times bios checks, and loading the os after the image is in RAM, then the array startup checks...

[hat22]

Thanks both, any ideas on how I can speed it up?

 

[electron286]

I would hook up a monitor to the server, and watch it.  Then you can see what is actually happening during bootup, POST, etc.  If you would like to make a detailed list of what happens, including times for each phase of booting up to the point the console login is presented.  Then after that how much time before the web GUI is available on a networked computer.  After that we can see what we can talk about to possibly speed things up.  The time you are seeing may be NORMAL for the hardware you have, but there may be some settings that could speed some phases up.

[hat22]

Thanks electron, I did as you said and hooked up a monitor. It started up detecting IDE drives and spent about 60secs doing this. Once it got past post, it did about 3 plus minutes of scrolling text with lots of failed messages. In total it was 5mins until it got to the username password screen. Attached is a video of the whole thing. It doesn't seem to play on the webpage but if you download the file, it should run fine. It's a 20MB mp4. I can make it whatever file format works best if you like.

Edited January 30, 2019 by hat22

[hat22]

Hi Guys,

 

Any ideas on why my unraid server is taking 5 minutes to boot.?Advice would be greatly appreciated

[Frank1940]

There is this segment in the log file (This is a portion of much larger section of essentially the same message) :

Jan 30 10:31:45 Tower kernel: ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
Jan 30 10:31:45 Tower kernel: ata2: SRST failed (errno=-16)
Jan 30 10:31:45 Tower kernel: ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
Jan 30 10:31:45 Tower kernel: ata2: SRST failed (errno=-16)

It is only happening on that one disk but I didn't google to see what the error might mean. 

 

It also appears that you have one of very low CPU's and apparently you are running in the IDE Mode.  You should switch out (or completely turn off the IDE mode) of that to the other mode (AHCI if I remember correctly).  

[hat22]

Thanks Frank, I am running quite old hardware now but it never used to boot this slow. I'm just running a parity check but when that finishes, I'll look into switching all my hard drives to AHCI mode.

 

Once I've resolved this 5mins fault, I'll then start looking into how I can speed up my boot time even more because even at it's best, it still takes a good minute to be ready. I'd like it to be more like 20 to 30 seconds if this is possible.

 

If anyone else notices anything that may be unnecessarily slowing me down, I'd appreciate any additional advice.

[electron286]

hat22, 

 

It looks like you have a Gigbyte board...

G41-ICH7-6A79PG0WC

G41M-Combo FB

 

1st, I would go into your BIOS settings, and under your "Advanced BIOS Features" screen near the bottom you will likely see a setting called; "Delay For HDD (Secs)"  Change it from the default setting of "0" to the maximum of "15".  This will allow the BIOS to wait before attempting to send commands to the hard drives to initialize the communications between the chipset and the drives.  This will insure the drives are fully ready to talk, unless there is a real problem.

 

2nd, if not already enabled, also enable "HDD S.M.A.R.T. Capability" on the same screen.

 

3rd, MAKE SURE THE "Backup BIOS Image to HDD" feature is already "DISABLED" - IF NOT YOU MAY WANT TO STOP HERE FOR A LITTLE BIT AND RESEARCH THE NASTY FEATURE AND THE HAVOC GIGABYTE HAS CAUSED US UNRAID USERS BECAUSE OF IT!!!

 

4th, press F10 to save... (this may not be needed here, but some BIOS versions require you to save before moving to antother screen to not loose the settings you just changed.)

 

5th, after looking to see of anything else needs to be changed anywhere, esc to leave the BIOS setup screens.

 

It looks like there is a problem with the hard drive on ATA2 to me.  The above steps MAY have helped, with the added delay for the hard drive to perform power up diagnostics before the mother board starts asking for responses.  Another possibility could be as easy as a loose connector/bad connection.  So I would next unplug the cables, then plug them back in to see if it makes any difference.  You could also move the cables between drives and ports on the mother board to identify a bad cable or port on the mother board.

 

In the BIOS settings again, you can also DISABLE any unused ports to make sure they are not also checked during POST.  This can speed things up some.

 

You can do some quick tests also by unplugging all the drives, and seeing how the system POSTs then try ONE drive at a time with additional POST time tests.  You can either unplug the Unraid FLASH drive during these tests (suggested), or power off the computer after the DMI POOL has been checked when the Lime Technology Boot Selection Screen pops up.

 

You probably should do a quick SMART test on all the drives after Unraid is booted.  Then you can see a little more than the normal SMART reporting will show.  A long test may also be advisable for the drive that seems suspect.

 

If all else looks good, you may want to replace the drive, and rebuild the data on a new one.

[hat22]

Thanks electron, that is some great advice   I'm going to get onto these things and report back.

[hat22]

Hi guys,

 

Basically, I moved data off disk 2 and removed it from the array. Unraid is now booting in about 38 seconds which is much better thanks so disk 2 was definitely the offender.

 

In regards to some of the bios suggestions, I tried changing the delay for HDD to 15 secs and it didn’t really change much.

 

HDD SMART capability is already enabled

 

Backup BIOS image to HDD was already disabled because I heard about this issue a few years back.

 

In regards to AHCI mode, I already had "on chip sata mode” set to “enhanced" so I assume they are in AHCI mode rather than IDE?

 

Thanks for the help

 

Regards, Graham

Edited February 3, 2019 by hat22