Pfsense Reporting CPU at 50% load

LinkageOracle · Jul 12, 2009, 8:06 PM

Hi,

I've installed pfsense several times to see whether I could fix this strange constant cpu load of 50%. I've tried both 1.2.2 and 1.2.3 RC1 and RC2. I'm using the SMP Kernel and have also tried Uniprocessor to see if it would make a difference, which it didn't.

The system is a Mini-ITX Intel Atom Board (D945GCLF) with 1GB of RAM (DDR2 @ 533), with all onboard audio disabled…

re0: RealTek 8101E/8102E/8102EL PCIe 10/100baseTX
re1: RealTek 8169/8169S/8169SB(L)/8110S/8110SB(L) Gigabit Ethernet
and a few bad NICs.

Both of the NICs works fine and there have been times when soon after a installation the CPU load is at 0-1% as expected and suddenly it shoots up to 50%. Phpsysinfo reports loads of (1.0).

When I execute the top command, it outputs this:

$ top
last pid:  9906;  load averages:  1.02,  1.02,  1.04  up 0+01:28:05    20:59:26
30 processes:  1 running, 29 sleeping

Mem: 31M Active, 13M Inact, 34M Wired, 224K Cache, 21M Buf, 905M Free
Swap: 2048M Total, 2048M Free

  PID USERNAME  THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE  C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
  491 root        1  -8    0 45804K 20924K piperd 0   0:07  0.68% php
  482 root        1   4    0 42732K 15808K accept 1   0:01  0.00% php
  708 root        1   8   20  3492K  1424K wait   0   0:01  0.00% sh
  856 root        1   8   20  3156K   796K nanslp 0   0:00  0.00% check_reload_status
  433 root        1   4    0  5100K  2940K kqread 0   0:00  0.00% lighttpd
  498 nobody      1  44    0  3156K  1348K select 0   0:00  0.00% dnsmasq
  307 root        1 -58    0  5724K  2064K bpf    0   0:00  0.00% tcpdump
 1345 root        1  44    0  3188K  1152K select 0   0:00  0.00% miniupnpd
  230 root        1  44    0  3268K  1140K select 0   0:00  0.00% syslogd
  456 root        1   8    0 39660K  5156K wait   1   0:00  0.00% php
  434 root        1   8    0 39660K  5156K wait   1   0:00  0.00% php
  484 root        1   8    0 39660K  5224K wait   0   0:00  0.00% php
  477 root        1   8    0 39660K  5156K wait   0   0:00  0.00% php
  916 _ntp        1  44    0  3156K  1228K select 0   0:00  0.00% ntpd
  783 dhcpd       1  44    0  3156K  2144K select 0   0:00  0.00% dhcpd
  833 root        1   8    0  3240K  1280K nanslp 0   0:00  0.00% cron
  888 root        1   8    0  3516K  1484K wait   1   0:00  0.00% login
  889 root        1  -8    0  3156K   792K piperd 0   0:00  0.00% sshlockout_pf

The state tables are pretty small ranging from 10 to 45 states. There aren't any packages like Snort running so I am unsure whether its a false report or real CPU usage.

I am at present running pfsense 1.2.3 RC2

Please advise.

–Linkage Oracle.

cmb · Jul 13, 2009, 6:14 AM

Nothing showing what's causing it there. Try top -S

LinkageOracle · Jul 13, 2009, 12:37 PM

Hi,

I've executed top -S, and found that acpi_task_0 is taking up 100% of CPU#1 and running for the same duration as uptime. I couldn't change the bootup to ACPI disabled (showed mounting errors) so instead I went through the intel website and looked for some BIOS updates. My mobo was using the initial BIOS from release and there was a new BIOS (which I believed fixed ACPI problems) so I went ahead and updated it.

Now its running the standard pfsense 1.2.3 RC2 snapshot from today just fine without no acpi_task eating away my CPU time. Also to note, bootup seems faster and actually responds to halt/reboot issued from the webGUI.

Thanks.

– Linkage Oracle