Re: Extremely slooooooooooow kickstart installs

[Ed Wilts <ewilts ewilts org>]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 04:12:23PM +1100, Tim Edwards wrote:
> We are doing kickstart installs using packages from a package repository 
> served from a (local network) web server using HTTP. Just doing a 
> kickstart of the minimal package set (602MB 268 packages) takes around 
> 40 minutes on brand new servers (P4 3GHZ hyperthreading 3GB RAM).
> Downloading RPM files from this package repository using wget (once the 
> system has been installed) shows that packages come down at 10MB/s or 
> more. The delay seems to be between package installs, ie once the 
> package starts installing it takes a fraction of a second to install 
> most of the time, but there is a several second pause between installing 
> the next package.
> 
> Anyone have any ideas about this?

I can think of a couple of things off the top of my head.  First, how's
the DNS?  Is there a chance that you're failing over to a second DNS
server looking up the address of the repository?  How does the kickstart
time change if you force the package source to use an IP address instead
of a name?

Secondly, is it every package that has the pause, or just some?  Are
there any postinstall scripts involved that could take a few seconds?
It doesn't sound likely but I thought I'd ask.

-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts ewilts org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program