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    Pfsense does not recognize 4GB ram

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    17 Posts 4 Posters 11.7k Views
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    • F
      fosiul
      last edited by

      Hi thanks again

      From last 3 weeks i am using pfsense in production environment with 1Gb of memory .
      Since I am using snort for both External and Internal Interfaces, its consuming 85-90% of memory.

      And Some times , browsing gets slow . as Squid+SquidGuard running ( and i set 200 mb for squid )

      so my minimum guess is i will need 2GB of ram.

      but i thought if I will  buy 4GB , as i am thinking i will create 2  VLANs and will put my Inhouse hosing project  under this pfsense router and it might need more memory.

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      • K
        kpa
        last edited by

        Number of channels (dual or single) has nothing to do with the OS's ability to use the memory in 3-4GB region in case of 32-bit operating systems. The memory mapped I/O memory regions that the PCI devices use have to be addressable all the time and just can not be "swapped" away to access the memory hidden beneath them.

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        • jimpJ
          jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
          last edited by

          You could try a 2.0 BETA4 snapshot for the amd64 platform. It can use 4GB and more, so long as your BIOS/MB/CPU support running a 64-bit OS.

          Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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          • F
            fosiul
            last edited by

            HI thanks

            I am using

            SmartValue! DELL™ PowerEdge™ R210 (SV3R210)

            ref :http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&kc=305&l=en&oc=SV3R210&s=bsd&sbc=poweredge-r210

            With 4GB of ram and the cpu is :

            Intel® Pentium® G6950, 2C, 2.80GHz, 4M Cache, Memory runs at 1066MHz Max

            I have few more server of same configuration. and I have installed Centos 64Bit on those

            so which means i would be able to install pfsense 64 bit , is not it ??

            Thanks again for your supports

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            • jimpJ
              jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
              last edited by

              It should work then. Just keep in mind that pfSense 2.0 is still BETA, not a release, so there are still some things that may not work.

              Here is a link to an .iso you can use to install it. If you have issues with 2.0, post in the 2.0 board:

              http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_8_1/amd64/pfSense_HEAD/livecd_installer/pfSense-2.0-BETA4-20100811-0244.iso.gz

              Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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              • F
                fosiul
                last edited by

                Hi thanks

                I just need bellow 4 packages to work

                Snort,Squid,Squid Guard,LightSquid,Bandwidthd

                is there any known issue with those 4 packages with 64 bit system  ??

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                • jimpJ
                  jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                  last edited by

                  Snort may not work - I think the others are OK. Squid and SquidGuard worked the last time I tested them.

                  2.0 isn't the issue for packages working, almost all of them are fine there, it's the 64-bit platform that may not have all the packages in order.

                  Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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                  • F
                    fosiul
                    last edited by

                    I am loving pfsense mostly for the snort . it has nice way to block offender by using snort .

                    but you saying, snort might not work with 64bit, in that case i will have to stick with 32 bit, as i really want to use snort .

                    but if you say : snort might work, might not then i will 64 bit a try ..

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                    • jimpJ
                      jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                      last edited by

                      I haven't tried snort on x64, so I can't say for sure. It might be worth trying. It may not work right now, but it will be fixed eventually.

                      Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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                      • F
                        fosiul
                        last edited by

                        Ok thanks
                        I will give it a try

                        and will come back to you on 2.0 Board

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                        • F
                          fosiul
                          last edited by

                          One more thing , i need advise ..

                          is this 64 bit recommended to put in production environment ??

                          if i put this 64bit in production, will there would be any security problem  as this is not tested properly

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                          • W
                            wallabybob
                            last edited by

                            @fosiul:

                            I have few more server of same configuration. and I have installed Centos 64Bit on those

                            so which means i would be able to install pfsense 64 bit , is not it ??

                            Yes, those system should support the 64 bit version of pfSense.

                            @kpa:

                            Number of channels (dual or single) has nothing to do with the OS's ability to use the memory in 3-4GB region in case of 32-bit operating systems.

                            Agreed, my remark about number of memory channels wasn't meant to have anything to do with memory in any particular region it was rather about the consequences of think of some of the memory as "wasted".

                            Consider a system with dual memory channels, four memory slots each with 1GB of RAM. You boot and see there is 1GB "wasted" memory and remove a stick. Now you have a configuration that at best has a lower available memory bandwidth than it did with 4 memory sticks. Even though that memory is not able to be accessed it is not "wasted" because its presence gives higher memory bandwidth than could be seen in its absence. The higher memory bandwidth might be important if the CPU has multiple threads all working pretty hard.

                            The guide for the relatively recent motherboard (ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI) effectively says a user may have one, two or four memory sticks in the system. The guide for a newer motherboard (ASUS M4A785D-M PRO) doesn't suggest that three memory sticks is a bad choice but mentions that some memory may operate in single channel mode if the memory configuration is not chosen wisely.

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                            • jimpJ
                              jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                              last edited by

                              It's a BETA snapshot - so that is up to you. We don't generally recommend them for production yet, but some people use them without problems.

                              There should not be any security issues. There might be a couple missing features or things that don't work quite as expected yet, but those are getting better every day.

                              It's up to what is required for your system. If you must have more than 4GB of RAM, then you will need to use x64. If you can get by with less for now, stick with 1.2.3 and update after 2.0 is released for real.

                              Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

                              Need help fast? Netgate Global Support!

                              Do not Chat/PM for help!

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