Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Memory shortage

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    14 Posts 4 Posters 1.4k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • P
      pfsjap @Gertjan
      last edited by

      @Gertjan said in Memory shortage:

      Let me put it this way : remove them, reboot.
      I'll bet you'll say : Problem solved !

      That may be the case, but I would rather have both and no swapping, as it was still on 23.01.

      Of course the feeds used might have grown since upgrading to 23.05, but more likely the change is in 23.05.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        Mmm, it's probably ZFS. But with those values I would not have expected it to stat swapping as you say. Especially if Free is at 40%. ๐Ÿค”

        How quickly does it start swapping?

        P 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • P
          pfsjap @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10 said in Memory shortage:

          How quickly does it start swapping?

          Rebooted and then reset data/graphs, so quite soon.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Like, minutes?

            P 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • P
              pfsjap @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10 No, I don't think so, but can't say when it started, because I wasn't watching. Within those 9 hours in the graph, apparently.

              GertjanG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • GertjanG
                Gertjan @pfsjap
                last edited by

                @pfsjap

                The thing is - for me - that you have memory that needs to be ... laundered.
                Dono what this means, so, time to learn something : https://wiki.freebsd.org/Memory
                It's is very clear :

                Laundry
                
                    Queue for managing dirty inactive pages, which must be cleaned ("laundered") before they can be reused
                    Managed by a separate thread, the laundry thread, instead of the page daemon
                    Laundry thread launders a small number of pages to balance the inactive and laundry queues
                    Frequency of laundering depends on:
                        How many clean pages the page daemon is freeing; more frees contributes to a higher frequency of laundering
                        The size of the laundry queue relative to the inactive queue; if the laundry queue is growing, we will launder more frequently 
                    Pages are scanned by the laundry thread (starting from the head of the queue):
                        Pages which have been referenced are moved back to the active queue or the tail of the laundry queue
                        Dirty pages are laundered and then moved close to the head of the inactive queue
                

                I'm joking of course.
                What does your system miss ? Soap ??

                What I presume is that these 'pages' stay to long 'non clean' (not laundered) and that's why your system start to take swap space.
                The real question is : some deep down kernel process, the one that cleans up, doesn't do so in time.
                Finding why and you'll be close to 'solved'.

                You are using a very known hard ware device.

                What you can do : is finding out who (what) process is provoking this situation.
                pfSense+ 23.05 'clean' : don't think so.
                pfBlockerNG ?
                snort ?
                Something else ? Like ZFS ?

                No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
                Edit : and where are the logs ??

                P 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • P
                  pfsjap @Gertjan
                  last edited by

                  @Gertjan said in Memory shortage:

                  What you can do : is finding out who (what) process is provoking this situation.

                  Well, it's obvious that Snort is consuming a lot of memory, but 23.01 was able to handle it.

                  Why there are 4 unbound instances, when I have configured 3 interfaces for DNS Resolver

                  last pid: 33114;  load averages:  0.17,  0.25,  0.27                                                                          up 0+18:59:58  17:46:31
                  330 threads:   5 running, 286 sleeping, 39 waiting
                  CPU:  0.1% user,  0.3% nice,  0.3% system,  0.0% interrupt, 99.3% idle
                  Mem: 1618M Active, 1937M Inact, 136M Laundry, 704M Wired, 3394M Free
                  ARC: 220M Total, 114M MFU, 102M MRU, 16K Anon, 1677K Header, 3742K Other
                       194M Compressed, 513M Uncompressed, 2.64:1 Ratio
                  Swap: 2048M Total, 222M Used, 1826M Free, 10% Inuse
                  
                    PID USERNAME    PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
                  69586 root         52   20  1229M  1061M bpf      2   0:21   0.33% /usr/local/bin/snort -R _34675 -D -q --suppress-config-log --daq pcap --daq-mode p
                  69586 root         52   20  1229M  1061M nanslp   1   0:00   0.00% /usr/local/bin/snort -R _34675 -D -q --suppress-config-log --daq pcap --daq-mode p
                  99170 root         52   20  1229M  1054M bpf      1   0:10   0.21% /usr/local/bin/snort -R _8486 -D -q --suppress-config-log --daq pcap --daq-mode pa
                  99170 root         52   20  1229M  1054M nanslp   2   0:00   0.00% /usr/local/bin/snort -R _8486 -D -q --suppress-config-log --daq pcap --daq-mode pa
                  13338 unbound      20    0   851M   786M kqread   3   0:02   0.30% /usr/local/sbin/unbound -c /var/unbound/unbound.conf{unbound}
                  13338 unbound      20    0   851M   786M kqread   2   0:02   0.15% /usr/local/sbin/unbound -c /var/unbound/unbound.conf{unbound}
                  13338 unbound      20    0   851M   786M kqread   1   0:01   0.00% /usr/local/sbin/unbound -c /var/unbound/unbound.conf{unbound}
                  13338 unbound      20    0   851M   786M kqread   0   0:11   0.00% /usr/local/sbin/unbound -c /var/unbound/unbound.conf{unbound}
                  66173 root         20    0    47M    34M bpf      3   0:02   0.00% /usr/local/sbin/arpwatch -Z -f /usr/local/arpwatch/arp_igc0.dat -i igc0 -w digger9
                  66825 root         20    0    47M    34M bpf      2   0:02   0.00% /usr/local/sbin/arpwatch -Z -f /usr/local/arpwatch/arp_igc2.dat -i igc2 -w digger9
                  64463 root         20    0    72M    23M piperd   0   0:07   0.01% /usr/local/bin/php_pfb -f /usr/local/pkg/pfblockerng/pfblockerng.inc filterlog
                  
                  
                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • P
                    pfsjap
                    last edited by

                    Also, Snort has been configured for two interfaces, yet there are four instances?

                    S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • S
                      SteveITS Galactic Empire @pfsjap
                      last edited by

                      @pfsjap I think that's normal in that view; try ps aux |grep snort

                      Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
                      When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
                      Upvote ๐Ÿ‘ helpful posts!

                      P 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • P
                        pfsjap @SteveITS
                        last edited by

                        @SteveITS Yes, my bad. Two Snort instances and one unbound instance.

                        S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          Yeah top can show all threads there. That's expected.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • S
                            SteveITS Galactic Empire @pfsjap
                            last edited by

                            @pfsjap BTW for Snort you should read https://forum.netgate.com/topic/180501/snort-v3/6 and consider Suricata.

                            "At some point in the future I expect the upstream Snort team will cease development work on Snort 2.9.x (the version currently in pfSense). At that point, unless someone has stepped up and created a Snort3 package, Snort will die on pfSense."

                            Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
                            When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
                            Upvote ๐Ÿ‘ helpful posts!

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • First post
                              Last post
                            Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.