Minute+ delay between kernel load and initialization (solved!)

[John Baldwin]

On Monday 19 April 2010 6:05:06 pm Charles Owens wrote:
> On 1/18/2010 10:05 AM, Charles Owens wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > We have a new system based on the Intel S5520 motherboard that seems to
> > work fine except during _every_ boot it pauses for about one minute 15
> > seconds just before any kernel initialization messages appear.   We see
> > the loader appearing to complete its work (the kernel is loaded) and
> > then... it sits.  Once it starts up again (with usual kernel-boot
> > messages) it appears to boot normally (no error messages).
> >
> > This has been seen with both FreeBSD 8.0 and 7.1, using GENERIC kernels.
> >  I'd appreciate any and all assistance in figuring this out.
> >
> > Boot output follows (happens to be from a PAE-enabled kernel)
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Charles
> >
> >   
> [truncated]
> 
> An answer to this was graciously provided by Titus Manea.   For details,
> see
> 
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=i386/144956

Interesting.  I do not see the long delay on Nehalem machines here.  Would 
either of you be able to debug this further?  You could maybe grab TSC values 
at various points during the early console probe and print out the relevant 
deltas after cninit() returns.  You could then move the TSC probe points 
around to pinpoint which operations are taking a long time.

-- 
John Baldwin