Ubuntu 14.04: Slow network boot prevents glusterfs volumes to mount

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 1 comments

Published on September 3rd 2014 - Listed in Linux

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On a physical server with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installed and a rather complicated network setup (including vlan tags and virtual bridges) I experienced very slow booting as soon as the boot process was about to start the network devices.

Unfortunately this slow starting up of the network devices prevented to mount the GlusterFS volumes automatically, as they require the network to mount the volumes. Here's the console log:

[...]
 * Starting configure network device security                            [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device                                     [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device security                            [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device                                     [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device security                            [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device                                     [ OK ]
 * Starting Mount network filesystems                                    [ OK ]
 * Stopping Mount network filesystems                                    [ OK ]
 * Starting configure virtual network devices                            [ OK ]
Waiting for network configuration...
 * Starting Waiting for state                                            [fail]
 * Stopping Waiting for state                                            [ OK ]
 * Starting Block the mounting event for glusterfs filesystems until the network interfaces are running                                                   [fail]
 * Stopping Mount filesystems on boot
Waiting up to 60 more seconds for network configuration...
[...]

I was looking for the reason why the system waits several times "Waiting ... for network configuration".
Through this forum post I found that these outputs come from /etc/init/failsafe.conf:

[...]
    # The point here is to wait for 2 minutes before forcibly booting
    # the system. Anything that is in an "or" condition with 'started
    # failsafe' in rc-sysinit deserves consideration for mentioning in
    # these messages. currently only static-network-up counts for that.

        sleep 20

    # Plymouth errors should not stop the script because we *must* reach
    # the end of this script to avoid letting the system spin forever
    # waiting on it to start.
        $PLYMOUTH message --text="Waiting for network configuration..." || :
        sleep 40

        $PLYMOUTH message --text="Waiting up to 60 more seconds for network configuration..." || :
        sleep 59
        $PLYMOUTH message --text="Booting system without full network configuration..." || :
[...]

What the hell? There's just a bunch of sleep and not doing anything (reminds me of the Autobahn working areas in Switzerland). So during 2 minutes the system is just sleeping, trying to wait for something, blocking the end of the booting process.

I commented/disabled the first "sleep 20" and set the other sleeps to 5 seconds each. The system now boots up much faster and even automatically mounts the glusterfs volume:

[...]
 * Starting configure network device security                            [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device                                     [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device security                            [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device                                     [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device security                            [ OK ]
 * Starting configure network device                                     [ OK ]
Waiting up to 5 more seconds for network configuration...
 * Starting Mount network filesystems                                    [ OK ]
 * Stopping Mount network filesystems                                    [ OK ]
 * Starting configure virtual network devices                            [ OK ]
Booting system without full network configuration...
[...]

mount | grep fuse.glusterfs
localhost:/vol1 on /mnt type fuse.glusterfs (rw,default_permissions,allow_other,max_read=131072)

I will probably comment/disable the "$PLYMOUTH message" lines, too. The network configuration is just fine after a few seconds.

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Comments (newest first)

Keith from Zambia wrote on Mar 20th, 2015:

Great post, after days of frustration. Thanks.

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