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Date:      Sat, 20 Oct 2012 18:02:55 -0400
From:      David Wimsey <dwimsey@rtsz.com>
To:        "Andrey V. Elsukov" <ae@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        "freebsd-fs@freebsd.org" <freebsd-fs@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: gptzfsboot very slow
Message-ID:  <211EBAB0-5105-4106-A3CF-30E4D08301DF@rtsz.com>
In-Reply-To: <5082D202.9010701@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <D5C49DEE-EAC6-4D2A-8E46-CD1BF6830151@rtsz.com> <5082D202.9010701@FreeBSD.org>

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On Oct 20, 2012, at 12:32 PM, "Andrey V. Elsukov" <ae@FreeBSD.org> =
wrote:

> On 20.10.2012 12:50, David Wimsey wrote:
>> My file server is configured with zfs root based on
>> http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot/Mirror
>>=20
>> When booting, after it gets past the BIOS drive C: is disk0 (one line
>> for each of the 6 drives as expected) part, drops to a new line and
>> the rotating twiddle starts its bit.  At first it moves a long at a
>> almost normal looking speed, then it starts only ticking away slowly,
>> maybe once or twice a minute.
>>=20
>> It appears that its scanning the entire drive or something odd.  Its
>> hard to tell if its doing it on all the drives as half of them are on
>> a RocketRAID card (configured as JBOD) which doesn't have a LED
>> indicator attached to it for showing activity.
>>=20
>> There are a total of  6 drives in the machine.
>>=20
>> 2 drives are SSDs which are sliced up to provide the root mirror
>> vdev, a mirrored vdev for the zip if the main pool on the machine and
>> each provide a slice L2ARC.  Some of the remaining space is in a
>> small pool 3 of the HDDs are part of a raidz vdev for my main pool.=20=

>> The remaining HDD is a hot spare.
>>=20
>> If I remove the HDDs from the system and just let the SSDs handle the
>> boot, its faster but still far longer than it should be, so when I'm
>> in a hurry I unplug the 4 HDDs, boot, wait for it to get to the
>> FreeBSD boot menu, plug the HDDs back in and send it on its marry
>> way.
>>=20
>> This can not be expected behavior in my mind.  Why is it doing so
>> much disk thrashing when the pools are all perfectly clean.
>=20
> Hi, David.
>=20
> These lines are not from gptzfsboot, but from the loader. You can try
> the loader(8) from the FreeBSD 10-CURRENT, you may take it  from =
recent
> snapshot:
> =
https://pub.allbsd.org/FreeBSD-snapshots/amd64-amd64/10.0-HEAD-20121006-JP=
SNAP/stage/trees/boot/zfsloader
>=20
> --=20
> WBR, Andrey V. Elsukov
>=20
> --=20
> WBR, Andrey V. Elsukov
>=20


Ding!  We have a winner!

The new  zfsloader fixed the problem, the twiddle keeps spinning fast =
and only takes a few seconds before jumping to the boot menu.

Thanks!

Just out of curiosity, do you know what change fixed it or what exactly =
the old loader was doing?=



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