CentOS - Feb 2019 - Performing post-installation setup tasks - for 75 minutes

I'm doing a new install, and everything seems to have gone fine apart from
the
incredible amount of time it's taken.

It does have 6 x  4TB drives in RAID6 and I am installing from a USB DVD drive 
as I had no SATA ports left, but this is getting rediculous.

I chose a simple install (the one above file and print server) and added 
Postgresql but that was about it.

It took over 5 hours to do the install and at 16:50 it changed to

Performing post-installation setup tasks.  That was 85 minutes ago.  The HDD 
light keeps flashing, but other than that (and the circle swirling) there 
doesn't seem to be any activity.

Is this normal and can I check to see if it is actually doing something?

Gary Stainburn wrote:
> I'm doing a new install, and everything seems to have gone fine apart
> from the incredible amount of time it's taken.
>
> It does have 6 x  4TB drives in RAID6 and I am installing from a USB DVD
> drive as I had no SATA ports left, but this is getting rediculous.
>
> I chose a simple install (the one above file and print server) and added
> Postgresql but that was about it.
>
>
> It took over 5 hours to do the install and at 16:50 it changed to
>
>
> Performing post-installation setup tasks.  That was 85 minutes ago.  The
> HDD
> light keeps flashing, but other than that (and the circle swirling) there
> doesn't seem to be any activity.
>
> Is this normal and can I check to see if it is actually doing something?
That is seriously excessive, esp. since even if selinux is relabelling
everything, it's a new system.

<ctrl-alt-F2> and see what journal or messages or dmesg have to say.

      mark

On Thursday 28 February 2019 18:25:52 mark wrote:
> Gary Stainburn wrote:
> > I'm doing a new install, and everything seems to have gone fine
apart
> > from the incredible amount of time it's taken.
> >
> > It does have 6 x  4TB drives in RAID6 and I am installing from a USB
DVD
> > drive as I had no SATA ports left, but this is getting rediculous.
> >
> > I chose a simple install (the one above file and print server) and
added
> > Postgresql but that was about it.
> >
> >
> > It took over 5 hours to do the install and at 16:50 it changed to
> >
> >
> > Performing post-installation setup tasks.  That was 85 minutes ago. 
The
> > HDD
> > light keeps flashing, but other than that (and the circle swirling)
there
> > doesn't seem to be any activity.
> >
> > Is this normal and can I check to see if it is actually doing
something?
>
> That is seriously excessive, esp. since even if selinux is relabelling
> everything, it's a new system.
>
> <ctrl-alt-F2> and see what journal or messages or dmesg have to say.
>
>       mark
dmesg has given lots of audit entries,

avc: denied {read} 

denied open and syslog reads etc too.  Bot if I repeatedly run dmesg I don't
get new entries appearing.

/var/log/messages is empty

journalctl shows lots of 

systemd: 'cannot add depenency job for unit......' and 
kernel:  type=1400 audit avc: denied 

the denied entries are for getattr, execute, read, open, execute_no_trans, and 
setrlimit

> I'm doing a new install, and everything seems to have gone fine apart
from
> the
> incredible amount of time it's taken.
>
> It does have 6 x  4TB drives in RAID6 and I am installing from a USB DVD
> drive
> as I had no SATA ports left, but this is getting rediculous.
Maybe you could try a network install and only use the USB DVD to boot. I
remember similar issues while installing servers using remote iso to
install via USB drive emulation with the servers management hardware.

Regards,
Simon

On Thu, 2019-02-28 at 18:19 +0000, Gary Stainburn wrote:
> I'm doing a new install, and everything seems to have gone fine apart
from the
> incredible amount of time it's taken.
> 
> It does have 6 x  4TB drives in RAID6 and I am installing from a USB DVD
drive
> as I had no SATA ports left, but this is getting rediculous.
> 
> I chose a simple install (the one above file and print server) and added 
> Postgresql but that was about it.
> 
> It took over 5 hours to do the install and at 16:50 it changed to
> 
> Performing post-installation setup tasks.  That was 85 minutes ago.  The
HDD
> light keeps flashing, but other than that (and the circle swirling) there 
> doesn't seem to be any activity.
> 
> Is this normal and can I check to see if it is actually doing something?
> 
Just as an added bit of information (because I see you are getting avc
issues as well).

I often see this when using Intel firmware raid - it basically comes
down to the initialisation of the RAID being a quite long process and
if initialisation and installation is happening at the same time
everything fights for disk bandwidth. A new installation on a new 1 Tb
RAID 1 can take 4 or 5 hours.

I usually just let it get on with its stuff and I come back in a few
hours (I've got plenty of other things to do!). Sometimes, if I know
I'll have to watch the install or if I'm trying new things, I'll
boot
into a live CD and let the RAID initialisation happen there.

P.

On Friday 01 March 2019 05:26:09 Simon Matter via CentOS
wrote:
> Maybe you could try a network install and only use the USB DVD to boot. I
> remember similar issues while installing servers using remote iso to
> install via USB drive emulation with the servers management hardware.
Hi Simon,

I did consider that, but after it was too late. Having said that, when it was 
completing it's post installation setup tasks, the DVD was not being used so
I doubt it will have made any difference.

I have no idea how long it took, but after 2+ hours of it saying performing 
post-install I got chucked out by security and went home.

Thankfully, when I got in this morning it had completed successfully, and 
appears to be working fine and at normal speed after rebooting to complete 
the install

On Friday 01 March 2019 09:52:52 Pete Biggs wrote:
> Just as an added bit of information (because I see you are getting avc
> issues as well).
>
> I often see this when using Intel firmware raid - it basically comes
> down to the initialisation of the RAID being a quite long process and
> if initialisation and installation is happening at the same time
> everything fights for disk bandwidth. A new installation on a new 1 Tb
> RAID 1 can take 4 or 5 hours.
>
> I usually just let it get on with its stuff and I come back in a few
> hours (I've got plenty of other things to do!). Sometimes, if I know
> I'll have to watch the install or if I'm trying new things,
I'll boot
> into a live CD and let the RAID initialisation happen there.
Thanks for this Pete.  Last time I built a server of this size, I did it at 
the end of the day and went home. This time it was time critical as I'm 
replacing 2 dead servers, so I was doing it during the day and watching. 

It was just so frustrating at 7pm having seen the post-installation for over 2 
hours. Just out of interest it would have been nice to know exactly when it 
did happen, but we'll never know.