Fast linux reboot with kexec

Kexec is a GNU/Linux kernel feature which allows to perform kernel reboots faster. The time savings around a few minutes are the result of not performing BIOS procedures and hardware reinitialization (each hardware part - like SCSI/FC HBAs - may have own BIOS and POST which takes some amount of time to finish). As we have cold or warm reset we can newly say we have kernel reset.

The GNU/Linux boot process consists of several stages. The hardware stage, firmware stage and bootloader stage are kernel independent and are run in defined order. The hardware stage performs basic hardware tasks such device initialization and testing it. The firmware stage known on PCs as BIOS is in charge of hardware detection. The bootloader can be split into two parts. The first-level bootloader is like master boot record on PCs which calls second-level bootloader which is able to boot Linux kernel. The final stage is kernel stage.

Kexec is smart thing. It can bypass all listed stages up to kernel stage. That means it is able to bypass all the things connected with hardware and jump to the kernel stage directly. The risk is a likely unreliability of untouched devices, typically VGAs or some buggy cards.

What about requirements to try it? The kernel has to be kexec-capable plus you have to have installed kexec tools. It is not problem in today's Linux distributions. Both RHEL 5.x and SLES 10.x contains kexec-tools package which you have to install. Their production kernels are capable of doing kernel resets. On SLES 10, you can check the running kernel configuration for CONFIG_KEXEC variable.

zgrep CONFIG_KEXEC /proc/config.gz

Kexec is controlled with command line program kexec. The command takes defined values for kernel to be booted, its initrd and kernel parameters and starts the kernel reset.