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.
Thanks it turned out to be a DNS issue - in the kickstart file I just
had to replace the DNS name of the kickstart server with its IP
address. The package install time went down from 40 minutes to 1
minute!!