During boot with Redhat 5.9, the system hangs for about 45 seconds after printing "INIT: version 2.74 booting". Then it prints "NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux..." and pauses for another 15 seconds or so before continuing on with the boot messages.
Try upgrading to the latest initscripts (3.96-4); it's available at ftp.redhat.com/starbuck & rawhide.redhat.com. Does that fix your problem?
Nope. I upgraded to the very newest (initscripts-3.96-5), and the long delay at that certain point still occurs during boot. I'm not sure what the system could possibly be doing.
Is this directly after it enters runlevel 3/5, and before it starts any services, or is it between particular services?
Apparently the long delay is immediately after it enters runlevel 3, before any services begin.
Actually, the init-2.74 is before it even goes into a runlevel - is it before the 'Activating swap partitions' message?
Yeah. The sequence is like this: INIT: version 2.74 booting [~45 second pause] NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0 [~15 second pause] Activating swap partitions [no pause; rest of boot messages display]
Weird. Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit, so the first line is #!/bin/sh -x and the three lines after "# Rerun ourselves through initlog" are commented out. What lines is it hanging between?
It's hanging before any of that output is spewed onto the screen. With your changes, it's just about the same sequence as before: INIT, big pause, NET4, pause, then a bunch of output from rc.sysinit scrolls by quickly.
OK. You can revert those changes, then. Does - rpm -V initscripts, rpm -V SysVinit show anything strange (aside from the rc.sysinit you just edited) - what kernel are you running?
For rpm -V SysVinit, nothing. For rpm -V initscripts: S.5....T c /etc/ppp/ip-down S.5....T c /etc/ppp/ip-up S.5....T c /etc/rc.d/rc.local .......T c /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit S.5....T c /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-lo All of these (except for ifcfg-lo) are changes I've made myself, and these particular scripts shouldn't even be running at the time INIT is displayed during boot, right? They come later on in the boot process.
correct. What kernel are you running - is it a RH one, or one you compiled yourself?
A 2.2.3 kernel I compiled myself. I probably should have mentioned that. However, it's pretty standard. The only halfway exotic thing in it is framebuffer support. I'm getting some errors during boot (later on) about devpts.o unresolved symbols. Could this error be in any way causing the lengthy pause after INIT?
no, that shouldn't be a problem. Can you try booting with a Red Hat kernel just to see if it still hangs?
The hang goes away with a stock 2.2.3-5 Redhat kernel. Odd. The hang only started happening after I switched from Redhat 5.2 to Starbuck.
I booted with the kernel you sent and also one compiled with the same .config file - no hang. One thing I might suggest is to see what happens if you compiled Unix domain sockets in instead of making it a module. Other than that, I'm not sure what's happening on your system.