The software described in this documentation is either in Extended Support or Sustaining Support. See https://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/enterprise-linux-support-policies-069172.pdf for more information.
Oracle recommends that you upgrade the software described by this documentation as soon as possible.
kexec is a fast-boot mechanism that allows a kernel to boot from inside the
context of a kernel that is already running without initializing the BIOS or firmware,
performing memory and device discovery, or passing through the boot-loader stage.
When you reboot a system, the init process goes to run-level 6 and runs
the /etc/init.d/halt script. If you have configured
kexec on the system, the script will execute the kexec -e command,
and cause the system to bypass the standard boot sequence.
The total amount of time saved when rebooting is highly dependent on your server, and can range from several tens of seconds to several minutes.
As fast reboots bypass device initialization, some devices might fail to work correctly, or a device driver might malfunction if it sees a device in an unexpected state. Before enabling this feature on your systems, test it to ensure that the hardware devices and their drivers continue to behave correctly across fast reboots.