Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Dirk Zimoch <[email protected]> · Fri, 30 Apr 2004 14:49:58 +0200

Dirk Zimoch wrote:

Hi all,
when I reboot a Motorola MVME5110, it takes ages (30 sec to be exact)
until the vxWorks boot procedure starts. It takes another 30 seconds
starting the loaded vxWorks kernel.
Does anyone know what the board is doing in all that time? The MVME2306
have never waited for so long. Can I reduce that time?
Dirk

After adding a lot of debug messages, I found where so much time is
spent. As some of you suspected and I doubted, the network interface is
involved but in an unexpected way. Memory setup also has a part in
consuming boot time.
I had enabled the second network interface by defining
INCLUDE_SECONDARY_ENET in config.h. Unfortunately, the result was that
fei82557EndLoad() in fei82557End.c tried auto negotiation on the
unconnected secondary interface for 20 seconds. It did so in the boot
loader and again at vxWorks startup.
To shorten boot time, I have undefined INCLUDE_SECONDARY_ENET in
bootConfig.c (I don't want to boot from that interface). I've also
hacked fei82557End.c not to try auto negotiation if it can't find a
carrier signal and not to retry if the first attempt failed. I found
that I still could use the secondary interface at 100MBS when I connect
it later.
How the time is spent now:

It takes 5 seconds until usrInit() is called.

For each enabled network interface it takes 3 seconds to read the 82557
EEPROM.

Auto negotiation needs 1.5 seconds if the network interface is connected.
It still needs about 10 seconds after power on or reset before the first
message is printed. I hope when I use BATs instead of PTEs, I can save
another 5 seconds or so.
Thanks to all for the helpful suggestions.
Dirk
--
Dr. Dirk Zimoch
Swiss Light Source
Paul Scherrer Institut
Computing and Controls
phone +41 56 310 5182
fax   +41 56 310 4413

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System