[Bug 415353] [NEW] karmic/lucid installation slow on "detecting network hardware" with bnx2x

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

You have been subscribed to a public bug by Stefan Bader (stefan-bader-canonical):

Binary package hint: linux-image-2.6.31-5-generic

When installing some of my new bl460c g6 blades with bnx2x 10GE
interfaces, the step "detecting network hardware" takes a really long
time. This is probably due to the installer scanning all interfaces
several times, and these blades have 8 of them (each physical interface
is split into 4 virtual one, each exposed as a nic by the kernel),
together with a 50-second timeout in the driver.

50 seconds times 8 interfaces times 3-4 probing rounds makes for a total
delay of 20-30 minutes, which is a bit painful.

The delay seems to be in "[bnx2x_wait_ramrod:6741(ethX)]timeout polling
for state c0000 on IDX [1]". Attached is a sample screen of the
installer messages.

I am booting a slightly modified (bnx2x dependencies added to the
initrd) karmic netboot installer as of last week, will try the latest
version as soon as #360966 gets fixed.

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SRU Justification (iniramfs-tools):

[Impact]

The libcrc32c module depends in a non-detectable way on the
crypto/crc32c module. If any driver (like the bnx2x) depends on
libcrc32c there will be problems while loading the driver without the
rootfs already attached. In the bnx2x case at least this delays the boot
process by 3-4 minutes while the driver waits and retries the modprobe
of libcrc32c.

[Fix]

This is a backport from Debian which is contained in newer releases. It
adds a checking function which looks for libcrc32c being in the
initramfs and if it is there manually adds crc32c.

[Testcase]

Before this change or if there is no driver required that pulls in libcrc32c
#> gunzip -c <initrd> | cpio -t | grep crc32
would show either nothing or libcrc32c alone. After the change it shows either none or both crc32 modules.

[Regression Potential]

Low. Even if the crc32c module would be added incorrectly, it would not
be used. The package could fail to build (though test build was done in
a current Lucid environment) or the generation of initramfs could fail
to unrelated reasons.

** Affects: initramfs-tools (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Fix Released

** Affects: linux (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Medium
         Status: Fix Released

** Affects: initramfs-tools (Ubuntu Lucid)
     Importance: Medium
     Assignee: Stefan Bader (stefan-bader-canonical)
         Status: In Progress

** Affects: linux (Ubuntu Lucid)
     Importance: Medium
         Status: Fix Released


** Tags: kernel-da-key kj-expired kj-triage needs-kernel-logs needs-upstream-testing
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karmic/lucid installation slow on "detecting network hardware" with bnx2x
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/415353
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