Kernel Startup Delay

Hello!

I am setting up a server with 4 SCSI hard disks, two of which I will jumper to have a delayed spin up as to not bake the power supply. These two drives will contain a striping RAID. I am concerned that the kernel will load off of the other drives and attempt to start this RAID before the disks have even spun up - is there a way to have the kernel delay its startup for a certain number of seconds while all the drives spin up?

Any hints are greatly appreciated.

Mark

I thought that this was a function of the SCSI BIOS? I know that with the Adaptec AHA-x940xx and AIC-78x0 you can tell the card/chip to spin up the drives after individually-configurable delays, and then continue booting the system once all the drives have spun up. Does your card/chip have a similar feature?

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams  <[email protected]>

I'm sure others have contributed to this, but depending on how much delay you're talking about, you may be able to set a startup delay via your SCSI BIOS (reference the settings screen showing all SCSI IDs and settings for each) if you have an Adaptec AHA2940, I know you can do this. Others you may need to taste before adding seasoning.

If you don't want to, or are unable to adjust the SCSI Controller's BIOS, you can insert a startup delay if you're using LILO, and have it wait "x" seconds which you can adjust in tenths of seconds (50=5 seconds) and have LILO wait before starting the kernel enough time for your drives to startup.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jim Roland, RHCE (RedHat Certified Engineer)
Owner, Roland Internet Services
"The four surefire rules for success: Show up, Pay attention, Ask
questions, Don't quit."
--Rob Gilbert, PH.D.
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Cuss" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 11:11 AM
Subject: Kernel Startup Delay

jumper

drives

off