Multiprocessor kernel vs uni with dell R200
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Can anybody tell me if I need to select a multiprocessor kernel with a core 2 duo " dual core" system?
Or would uniprocessor be the better option?
Also, I have two onboard broadcoms (BGE) and two Intels (add on card, EM0)
I've been reading problems related to the Intel nics lately, would you guys suggest using the Broadcom for the heaviest interfaces instead of the intel?
Do I need to enable the 64bit instructions in the bios? I believe it's called VT 64.
If I use the multiproc kernel, does this have any disadvantages relating to non working packages etc?
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You should select the multiprocessor kernel; without it, only one of your processor cores will work.
There should be no difference in working packages with a multiprocessor kernel - FreeBSD and many of the packages are threaded even on a uniprocessor machine, though a multiprocessor system increases the chances of out of order execution and therefore race conditions and similar threading problems. However, any such problems are bugs; most software used in pfSense packages are regarded as server programs and will be routinely used on multiprocessor machines. These days, multiprocessor machines are getting to be ubiquitous, in that all processors other than in embedded boards (such as Soekris and ALIX boards) tend to be multi-core.
The 64 bit instructions are enabled automatically - not that they are used, because pfSense is based around FreeBSD i386. You can enable virtualisation if you want (that's Intel VT), but it makes no difference because FreeBSD doesn't use it anyway.
I'm not sure which problems with Intel NICs you refer to; the Intel cards are usually regarded as the best supported and maintained on FreeBSD, not least because an Intel employee commits fixes and updates for the driver directly to FreeBSD (Jack Vogel is a FreeBSD src committer in his own right). The only problems I've seen are lack of support for some new cards in the versions of FreeBSD that pfSense uses.
The Broadcom NICs are fine in my experience, including use with VLANs and traffic shaping. This post comes to you via an R200's Broadcom NICs.
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Hey David,
I'm running the multithreaded version of pfsense 1.2RC/beta (latest snapshot) could the multithreaded pfsense cause these errors? :
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,12372.0.html