HP-UX

I've never really explored the options available in the boot firmware on our servers. Outside of needing to change boot device paths a few times for various reasons, I'm wondering what the implications are of turning off FASTBOOT. According to the man page for 'setboot', it seems that when FASTBOOT is on, the tests are performed, and vice versa. We don't boot these guys a lot at all. In fact our Oracle server had a 600+ day uptime a while back. But, when we do boot, they take a LONG time before they even get to the kernel boot hand off. So, if I disable FASTBOOT (which seems counterintuitive) that should disable the full_memory and PDH tests which I think would speed up boot time considerably.

Of course, I assume these tests are there for reasons other than annoying the hell out of me by lacking any feedback on the console... So by NOT testing that stuff at boot, what would I be missing? How would this differ from x86 servers that have their memory tests disabled (which seems to be standard practice on the x86 side of things)? Is this a "bad idea" (tm)?

I think that most folks disable the full memory tests. When the 9000's first came out, an 8 MB system was average sized and 64 MB was the max. At that point the full tests made sense. As memory sizes grew the test became annoying. Now it can take hours. In 25 plus years as a HP Sys Admin, I believe that I saw two bad memory boards and one of those was dead on arrival.

I would run the full tests once when I first get the system for sure. After that, a yearly full test might make sense... but I never did that.