Slow boots with kernel-2.6.0-0.test9.1.67

[James Drabb]

I just did some stop watch timings with kernels
kernel-2.6.0-0.test9.1.67 and kernel-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
with regards to boot times.

kernel-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
-------------------------
w/rhgb:   1:11
wo/rhgb:  1:07


kernel-2.6.0-0.test9.1.67
-------------------------
w/rhgb:   1:47
wo/rhgb:  1:42


I turned off kudzu.  The big problem with 2.6 seems to be
in rc.sysinit when it runs depmod -A:

INITLOG_ARGS= action $"Finding module dependencies: " depmod -A

On the 2.6 kernel this took about 37 seconds and on the 2.4 kernel it
was only 3-5 seconds.  Is there any reason for depmod to be close to 10
times slower on a 2.6 kernel?  Also, is there really a need to rebuild
the module dependency file at each reboot?  Isn't this step performed
when the kernel is built?

Jim Drabb
-- 
James Drabb
Senior Programmer Analyst
Davenport, FL USA