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    Dismal squid performance

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved 2.0-RC Snapshot Feedback and Problems - RETIRED
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    • C
      clarknova
      last edited by

      @jimp:

      Have you tried it on 32-bit?

      No, because I wanted to use all of my RAM. I may have to if I don't get some resolution though. Still, I would have expected to see something not working out if it wasn't well supported, like high CPU usage or so.

      Of course, now that I've done a fresh reinstall, squid won't even start, so maybe that's a sign.

      db

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      • jimpJ
        jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
        last edited by

        Well it's hard to say what the exact cause might be in this case, I was just curious if the performance was the same or different on 32 vs 64. If they are both slow, it's probably more related to the network card or some other chipset issue.

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        • C
          clarknova
          last edited by

          Right. I will give 32 bit a try.

          db

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          • jimpJ
            jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
            last edited by

            Looks like amd64 packages are having a problem. Somehow some of them are being mixed up with their 32-bit counterparts, resulting in libs that won't load on amd64. I'm checking into it.

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            • jimpJ
              jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
              last edited by

              32-bit and 64-bit squid should be OK now. Both were rebuilt today and I've tried them out and they are starting again.

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              • C
                clarknova
                last edited by

                I reinstalled squid 64-bit in a vm today and performance is worse than before. For example, downloading an iso from http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca, without squid it comes in ~6mbps. Using squid (non-transparent mode) it's a steady 1.75+/-.02 mbps. Using squid on a 32-bit pfsense 1.2.3 vm, the same download comes out of cache ~200 mbps. Both VMs are on the same ESXi server using 2 Xeon 5150 CPU cores and Intel GBE. PF 2.0 has 6GB RAM and 1.2.3 has 3.0GB, so hardware should not be an issue. Squid settings are identical between the two.

                db

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                • jimpJ
                  jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                  last edited by

                  What is the output of "ifconfig -a" when running on 64-bit?

                  If it says anything about TSO and/or LRO, go into the advanced options and make sure the options to disable those are checked, and you may as well disable checksums.

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                  • C
                    clarknova
                    last edited by

                    $ ifconfig -a
                    em0: flags=8843 <up,broadcast,running,simplex,multicast>metric 0 mtu 1500
                    	options=9b <rxcsum,txcsum,vlan_mtu,vlan_hwtagging,vlan_hwcsum>ether 00:0c:29:59:fa:4e
                    	inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe59:fa4e%em0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1 
                    	inet 172.21.252.1 netmask 0xfffffe00 broadcast 172.21.253.255
                    	nd6 options=3 <performnud,accept_rtadv>media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
                    	status: active
                    em1: flags=8843 <up,broadcast,running,simplex,multicast>metric 0 mtu 1500
                    	options=9b <rxcsum,txcsum,vlan_mtu,vlan_hwtagging,vlan_hwcsum>ether 00:0c:29:59:fa:58
                    	inet 172.21.33.58 netmask 0xfffffe00 broadcast 172.21.33.255
                    	inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe59:fa58%em1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2 
                    	nd6 options=3 <performnud,accept_rtadv>media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
                    	status: active
                    plip0: flags=8810 <pointopoint,simplex,multicast>metric 0 mtu 1500
                    lo0: flags=8049 <up,loopback,running,multicast>metric 0 mtu 16384
                    	options=3 <rxcsum,txcsum>inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 
                    	inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
                    	inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4 
                    	nd6 options=3 <performnud,accept_rtadv>pfsync0: flags=0<> metric 0 mtu 1460
                    	syncpeer: 224.0.0.240 maxupd: 128
                    pflog0: flags=100 <promisc>metric 0 mtu 33152
                    enc0: flags=0<> metric 0 mtu 1536</promisc></performnud,accept_rtadv></rxcsum,txcsum></up,loopback,running,multicast></pointopoint,simplex,multicast></full-duplex></performnud,accept_rtadv></rxcsum,txcsum,vlan_mtu,vlan_hwtagging,vlan_hwcsum></up,broadcast,running,simplex,multicast></full-duplex></performnud,accept_rtadv></rxcsum,txcsum,vlan_mtu,vlan_hwtagging,vlan_hwcsum></up,broadcast,running,simplex,multicast>
                    

                    TSO and LRO were already disabled. I disabled checksum offloading and DL from cache is still 1.77mbps. This is on a VM.

                    db

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                    • jimpJ
                      jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                      last edited by

                      Looks normal then in that regard.

                      Is it VMware?
                      If so, can you confirm if the normal VMware settings are still there?

                      /etc/sysctl.conf should have:

                      kern.timecounter.hardware=i8254
                      

                      /boot/loader.conf should have:

                      kern.hz="100"
                      

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                      • C
                        clarknova
                        last edited by

                        I'll try those. By default my sysctl.conf has no uncommented lines, and loader.conf is empty.

                        db

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                        • C
                          clarknova
                          last edited by

                          I copied /boot/loader.conf from another 2.0 machine, added those two lines from your post to their respective files, and rebooted. DL from cache is now 2.3 +/- .2 mbps. This is on ESXi, pfsense installed from pfsense.iso

                          db

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                          • C
                            clarknova
                            last edited by

                            Are you getting good performance from yours now? If so I will try reinstalling it on my home pfsense. I just set up the vm because of the crashing that happened during the 32/64 fiasco. I want to minimize testing on my home box but if there's a chance that my issues are specific to this vm then I'll drop it like a rock.

                            db

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                            • jimpJ
                              jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                              last edited by

                              I don't have a VM setup "behind" it to test right now. Mine is also in VirtualBox so it's a bit different setup.

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                              • C
                                clarknova
                                last edited by

                                I installed squid on a fresh Beta4 i386 system this morning andโ€ฆ.same problem. iso comes out of cache at 3.3 mbps. About halfway through the download it jumps to 10 mbps. No detectable signs of strain from any part of the system, just slow.

                                db

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                                • jimpJ
                                  jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                                  last edited by

                                  I tried it out on my amd64 box today, I moved an XP VM behind the amd64 pfSense VM with squid, and it came through at the full wire speed of my cable, 10Mbps.

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                                  • C
                                    clarknova
                                    last edited by

                                    Uncached objects always download at the expected rate, it's the cached objects that are slow without apparent cause. Try deleting the download from your xp machine and then download it again. Assuming your squid cache was configured to cache objects of that size, you will see what I mean.

                                    The expected behaviour is that cached objects should download at a speed that is bounded only by CPU, LAN network, or disk speed. Try this exercise in 1.2.3 and see the difference.

                                    db

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                                    • jimpJ
                                      jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                                      last edited by

                                      Ah, well I noticed in my haste of configuring squid I left its cache size as 100mb, not very effective if I want to store ISOs while testingโ€ฆ

                                      So I bumped it up to 3GB, and tried again, and the download came to me at 17MByte/s (byte, not bit). I deleted the downloaded file and cleared firefox's cache between attempts. Squid's access log shows a TCP_HIT for the request so I know it was coming from the cache.

                                      I'll try it a few more times with different download locations to see if I get any differences.

                                      This is on an amd64 VM on a core i5-750, with the only tweak being the single loader.conf line tweaking nmbclusters to 32768.

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                                      • jimpJ
                                        jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                                        last edited by

                                        Tried a few more iso downloads and the lowest one I got was 10MByte/s. (Though it went back and forth between 10-11) and the fastest was that first one, about 17MB/s.

                                        I did notice that at least one place, Knoppix, looked like it was an http link on a mirror but actually redirected to an ftp link so it bypassed the cache entirely. (I only figured that out when I right clicked on the download in FF and copied the link to be sure I got the same thing twice).

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                                        • C
                                          clarknova
                                          last edited by

                                          Well that's way better than I can get out of it. Can I copy your config? I must be doing something wrong, or there is a hardware problem that is common to my home machine and the vm at work.

                                          db

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                                          • jimpJ
                                            jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                                            last edited by

                                            Nothing special about the config, just a stock install (I haven't even changed the hostname or many other basic options really)

                                            Squid and Lightsquid are the only packages on it.

                                            Here's the squid sections:

                                            
                                            		 <squid><config><active_interface>lan</active_interface>
                                            				<allow_interface>on</allow_interface>
                                            				<transparent_proxy>on</transparent_proxy>
                                            				 <private_subnet_proxy_off><defined_ip_proxy_off><log_enabled>on</log_enabled>
                                            				<log_dir>/var/squid/log</log_dir>
                                            				 <log_rotate><proxy_port>3128</proxy_port>
                                            				 <icp_port><visible_hostname>localhost</visible_hostname>
                                            				<admin_email>admin@localhost</admin_email>
                                            				<error_language>English</error_language>
                                            				 <disable_xforward><disable_via><uri_whitespace>strip</uri_whitespace>
                                            				 <dns_nameservers><disable_squidversion></disable_squidversion></dns_nameservers></disable_via></disable_xforward></icp_port></log_rotate></defined_ip_proxy_off></private_subnet_proxy_off></config></squid> 
                                            		 <squidcache><config><harddisk_cache_size>3000</harddisk_cache_size>
                                            				<harddisk_cache_system>aufs</harddisk_cache_system>
                                            				<harddisk_cache_location>/var/squid/cache</harddisk_cache_location>
                                            				<memory_cache_size>8</memory_cache_size>
                                            				<minimum_object_size>0</minimum_object_size>
                                            				<maximum_object_size>50000000</maximum_object_size>
                                            				<level1_subdirs>16</level1_subdirs>
                                            				<memory_replacement_policy>heap GDSF</memory_replacement_policy>
                                            				<cache_replacement_policy>heap LFUDA</cache_replacement_policy>
                                            				<cache_swap_low>90</cache_swap_low>
                                            				<cache_swap_high>95</cache_swap_high>
                                            				 <donotcache><enable_offline></enable_offline></donotcache></config></squidcache> 
                                            
                                            

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