swap not listed? [solved]

SteveITS · Mar 11, 2023, 3:32 PM

@johnpoz the ZFS/disk layout changed with 22.01/2.6…in the release notes :
“The ZFS pool name and datasets have also been updated and optimized. Users who were already using ZFS may want to reinstall as well to ensure they have the most optimal disk layout.”

Not sure if that’s relevant here but you said “a few versions.”

johnpoz · Mar 11, 2023, 4:03 PM

@steveits yeah I did a clean install on 22.01 because of the layout changes.

JonathanLee · Mar 11, 2023, 7:33 PM

@johnpoz I have the same issue the swap is missing from the widget, even if you turn on ZFS the swap widget is missing

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JonathanLee · Mar 11, 2023, 7:34 PM

@steveits I have a full clean install from the firmware that was sent and it is missing from mine also.

jimp · Mar 11, 2023, 8:21 PM

@mvikman

Yours doesn't show in the widget because the widget is filtering the swapinfo output looking for a device with a number in it and yours is /dev/mirror/swap which I'm not sure how it ended up with that name.

I only have one VM still around with gmirror and it's named /dev/mirror/pfSenseMirrors1b on there, so it shows up because of the 1.

That said, mirroring swap is really a bad idea and I'm not sure why it used to do that. It isn't critical data and that will just cause twice the disk activity for no benefit. Slower and wasteful. A fresh ZFS install with mirroring has a separate swap area on both disks (not mirrored) but maybe if someone went out of their way to do it manually it might end up mirrored. It's an option when setting up the mirror but it defaults to off.

@johnpoz said in swap not listed?:

@mvikman wonder why my fstab is pointing to da1, that would explain why swap not showing on widget I would think.

Probably because the disk is daX. When booted from USB that might affect the order of the disks being detected so the USB drive might be da0 and the mmc is da1 but later after install without the USB drive in, the mmc is da0. Usually it would have used a disk label or disk ID in the fstab but it may not have for one reason or another. The installer has changed a lot over time.

You can fix that easily enough, just edit the fstab and reboot, or you could manually run the commands to setup the swap but it's best to just reboot and let it happen naturally.

mvikman · Mar 11, 2023, 10:20 PM

@jimp
But mine does show on the widget even though it is /dev/mirror/swap

Hmm, maybe I followed some older guide that suggested that the swap should also be mirrored...
Is is possible to remove the mirror from the swap or would it require clean re-install?

jimp · Mar 11, 2023, 10:46 PM

Not sure there is any easy way to break that mirror. Reinstalling is so quick/easy that's probably the most reliable way to do it.

mvikman · Mar 11, 2023, 11:13 PM

Tested with a virtual machine, "/dev/mirror/swap" was created by the 2.6CE installer when selecting "Mirror swap" option
Is it using GEOM Mirror for the swap and ZFS Mirror for the rest of the data?

jimp · Mar 11, 2023, 11:19 PM

@mvikman said in swap not listed?:

Tested with a virtual machine, "/dev/mirror/swap" was created by the 2.6CE installer when selecting "Mirror swap" option
Is it using GEOM Mirror for the swap and ZFS Mirror for the rest of the data?

It must be, since it's showing in /dev/mirror. That's all a part of the BSD installer and not our code though IIRC.

mvikman · Mar 12, 2023, 1:30 AM

What makes mirroring swap a bad idea, other than possible writes to swap are doubled/slower?
Does it really matter if swap is not used at all in normal situations (system has enough RAM not to swap)?

jimp · Mar 12, 2023, 1:30 AM

@mvikman said in swap not listed?:

What makes mirroring swap a bad idea, other than possible writes to swap are doubled/slower?
Does it really matter if swap is not used at all in normal situations (system has enough RAM not to swap)?

Those two reasons are more than enough to not do it. Swap is already slow enough compared to RAM, making it even slower is going to be a problem if/when the system needs to hit swap.

If your system never hits swap it's not going to matter much (until it does...) but there is no advantage to it either.

JonathanLee · Mar 12, 2023, 3:30 AM

@jimp In the case of Squid Proxy and content acceleration I have a 15 gb swap set up it's almost 70 percent full. Is this not the same thing, as it is considered a swap under the proxy ?

johnpoz · May 6, 2024, 12:47 AM

Well manually edit of fstab to be da0 vs da1, finally got around to a reboot of pfsense and now see swap

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I don't really like rebooting my firewall.. Waited for a time when nobody streaming off plex, and wasn't doing anything else, etc.

I will mark as solved, thanks Jim!

edit: just to be complete, swapinfo now shows

[23.01-RELEASE][admin@sg4860.local.lan]/root: swapinfo
Device          1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity
/dev/da0p2        1048576        0  1048576     0%
[23.01-RELEASE][admin@sg4860.local.lan]/root:

jimp · Mar 13, 2023, 12:51 PM

@jonathanlee said in swap not listed? [solved]:

@jimp In the case of Squid Proxy and content acceleration I have a 15 gb swap set up it's almost 70 percent full. Is this not the same thing, as it is considered a swap under the proxy ?

That is unrelated. That is about squid's internal memory vs disk cache. This is about OS RAM usage.

azdeltawye · Mar 14, 2023, 6:59 AM

@johnpoz
I'm having the same issue on my brand new 4100; swap partition exists but is not showing in the widget.

I typed in the command: cat /etc/fstab but not sure where to go from here.

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gpart show
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I'm not sure why it says freebsd-ufs when the disk widget shows zfs...
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Gertjan · Mar 14, 2023, 7:07 AM

@azdeltawye said in swap not listed? [solved]:

I'm having the same issue on my brand new 4100; swap partition exists but is not showing in the widget

See Netgate 4100 disk : my 4100 MAX came with 22.01 pre installed and had a swap partition, but not shown in the GUI dashboard widget.
Had to edit the /etc/fstab/ as mentioned above.

This is mine right now :

[23.01-RELEASE][admin@pfSense.brit-hotel-fumel.net]/root: cat /etc/fstab
# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
/dev/nvd0p3             none    swap    sw              0       0

NOte ; back then, see other thread, I had a first line :

/dev/msdosfs/EFISYS     /boot/efi       msdosfs rw,noatime,noauto       0       0

Now, it is 't there anymore.

@azdeltawye said in swap not listed? [solved]:

freebsd-ufs when the disk widget shows zfs

Can't tell ...
I did do a complete re install with an fresh "22.05" image from Netgate, last September just to complete my 'crash test formation'.

jimp · Mar 14, 2023, 12:27 PM

The 4100 MAX I have here appears to be OK, it was freshly installed recently with 23.01, though. It's possible there was an issue in the older installer.

I'm curious though if anyone can reproduce that with a fresh 23.01 install.

: cat /etc/fstab
# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
/dev/gpt/efiboot0               /boot/efi       msdosfs rw              2       2
/dev/nvd0p3             none    swap    sw              0       0

: swapinfo
Device          1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity
/dev/nvd0p3       1048576        0  1048576     0%

: gpart show -p
=>       40  234441568    nvd0  GPT  (112G)
         40     532480  nvd0p1  efi  (260M)
     532520       1024  nvd0p2  freebsd-boot  (512K)
     533544        984          - free -  (492K)
     534528    2097152  nvd0p3  freebsd-swap  (1.0G)
    2631680  231809024  nvd0p4  freebsd-zfs  (111G)
  234440704        904          - free -  (452K)

azdeltawye · Mar 14, 2023, 6:39 PM

@gertjan
Thanks for the link to the applicable thread. I am in the exact same situation.
I will reply there with any updates.

azdeltawye · Mar 16, 2023, 12:11 AM

OK, problem solved.

I did a fresh install of 23.01 on my 4100-MAX and now the SWAP partition is recognized!

Before:

Shell Output - cat /etc/fstab

# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
/dev/msdosfs/EFISYS     /boot/efi       msdosfs rw,noatime,noauto       0       0
/dev/gptid/1fa4f543-c6a2-11ec-93d9-90ec772a1255		none	swap	sw		0	0

Shell Output - gpart show -p

=>        3  234441637    nvd0  GPT  (112G)
          3     409600  nvd0p1  efi  (200M)
     409603  222504511  nvd0p2  freebsd-ufs  (106G)
  222914114   11527521  nvd0p3  freebsd-swap  (5.5G)
  234441635          5          - free -  (2.5K)

After:

Shell Output - cat /etc/fstab

# Device		Mountpoint	FStype	Options		Dump	Pass#
/dev/gpt/efiboot0	/boot/efi	msdosfs	rw		2	2
/dev/nvd0p3		none		swap	sw		0	0

Shell Output - gpart show -p

=>       40  234441568    nvd0  GPT  (112G)
         40     532480  nvd0p1  efi  (260M)
     532520       1024  nvd0p2  freebsd-boot  (512K)
     533544        984          - free -  (492K)
     534528   16777216  nvd0p3  freebsd-swap  (8.0G)
   17311744  217128960  nvd0p4  freebsd-zfs  (104G)
  234440704        904          - free -  (452K)

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JonathanLee · Mar 16, 2023, 12:41 AM

@jimp does the 2100-Max have an ability to have a swap partition on the 30GB SSD drive? This is after a fresh install of 23.01 from TAC support provided software.

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