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    High CPU-usage with a Intel Core i3?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • jimpJ
      jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
      last edited by

      top -SH
      

      (capital s, capital h)

      Also be sure to include the header lines that list the summary of cpu/ram/etc usage.

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      • K
        KrPacMan
        last edited by

        Ops, sorry. Here's the full output:

        _$ top -SH
        last pid: 59280;  load averages:  0.22,  0.11,  0.04  up 42+20:33:39    19:09:33
        84 processes:  2 running, 63 sleeping, 19 waiting

        Mem: 70M Active, 26M Inact, 38M Wired, 92K Cache, 31M Buf, 1729M Free
        Swap: 4096M Total, 4096M Free

        PID USERNAME PRI NICE  SIZE    RES STATE    TIME  WCPU COMMAND
          34 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT  823.4H 96.00% irq19: sf1 atapci1
          11 root    171 ki31    0K    8K RUN    189.3H 10.79% idle: cpu0
          25 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT  380:59  0.00% irq18: sf0 atapci0
          26 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT  202:23  0.00% irq16: sf3 ehci0
          15 root      44    -    0K    8K -      125:28  0.00% yarrow
          12 root    -32    -    0K    8K WAIT    52:33  0.00% swi4: clock sio
          33 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT    17:49  0.00% irq22: ral0
        24434 root      8  20  6564K  4844K wait    9:03  0.00% sh
          442 root    -58    0 21076K 18960K bpf      2:31  0.00% tcpdump
          420 root      44    0  3268K  1148K select  2:01  0.00% syslogd
            4 root      -8    -    0K    8K -        1:57  0.00% g_up
          20 root      8    -    0K    8K -        1:39  0.00% thread taskq
            5 root      -8    -    0K    8K -        1:16  0.00% g_down
          443 root      -8    0  3156K  784K piperd  1:05  0.00% logger
          988 root      8  20  3156K  796K nanslp  1:04  0.00% check_reload_status
          48 root      20    -    0K    8K syncer  0:46  0.00% syncer
          613 root      4    0  6168K  3128K kqread  0:30  0.00% lighttpd
            3 root      -8    -    0K    8K -        0:25  0.00% g_event_

        Seems to be problems with an IRQ, maybe from the Ralink or SiS-nics?

        Panda GateDefender Performa 8100 (Portwell NR-5500) with Pfsense 2.1 :: blog

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        • jimpJ
          jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
          last edited by

          grep atapci1 /var/log/dmesg.boot

          It's probably an HDD controller, so something is making the HDD chew up lots of CPU.

          You might try adjusting any IDE/SATA options you have in the BIOS.

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          • K
            KrPacMan
            last edited by

            Very strange. SF1 is one of the server NIC:s with four ports.

            Sorry to take your time, but i'm terrible with FreeBSD :-/ The grep command gave me this:

            atapci1: <intel ata="" controller="">port 0xf090-0xf097,0xf080-0xf083,0xf070-0xf077,0xf060-0xf063,0xf050-0xf05f,0xf040-0xf04f irq 19 at device 31.2 on pci0
            atapci1: [ITHREAD]
            ata4: <ata 0="" channel="">on atapci1
            ata5: <ata 1="" channel="">on atapci1</ata></ata></intel>

            Could it be the HDD that has bad sectors etc?

            Panda GateDefender Performa 8100 (Portwell NR-5500) with Pfsense 2.1 :: blog

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            • jimpJ
              jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
              last edited by

              Is the drive actually on that controller? Is anything?

              atacontrol list
              

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              • K
                KrPacMan
                last edited by

                ATA channel 0:
                    Master:      no device present
                    Slave:      no device present
                ATA channel 1:
                    Master:      no device present
                    Slave:      no device present
                ATA channel 2:
                    Master:      no device present
                    Slave:      no device present
                ATA channel 3:
                    Master:      no device present
                    Slave:      no device present
                ATA channel 4:
                    Master:  ad8 <st980811as 3.alb="">SATA revision 1.x
                    Slave:      no device present
                ATA channel 5:
                    Master: acd0 <optiarc dvd="" rw="" ad-5240s="" 1.03="">SATA revision 1.x
                    Slave:      no device present</optiarc></st980811as>

                Panda GateDefender Performa 8100 (Portwell NR-5500) with Pfsense 2.1 :: blog

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                • jimpJ
                  jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                  last edited by

                  So it could be either the HDD or the DVD

                  You could try moving the DVD drive to another controller, see if the problem stays the same or follows the DVD drive.

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                  • K
                    KrPacMan
                    last edited by

                    Thanks! I'll try to change SATA-port and unplug the DVD. Very strange problem since the controller is the standard ICH11 from Intel.

                    Panda GateDefender Performa 8100 (Portwell NR-5500) with Pfsense 2.1 :: blog

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                    • W
                      wallabybob
                      last edited by

                      This line

                      34 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT  823.4H 96.00% irq19: sf1 atapci1

                      shows its the irq19 handler thats chewing up most of the CPU. It shows that AT LEAST devices sf1 and atapci1 use irq19. There may be others.

                      One possible explanation is that the BIOS has either incorrectly calculated the IRQs or has provided incorrect information to FreeBSD such that FreeBSD thinks that some device which really uses IRQ19 uses (say IRQ17). If this is happening then the handler for such device would be on IRQ17 and when the device interrupts on IRQ19 there is no handler there to clear the interrupt condition and so on exit from the interrupt there is an immediate interrupt again because the interrupt condition hasn't been cleared.

                      Another possible explanation is that there is a bug in the handler for some device on IRQ19 and in some circumstances the interrupt condition is not cleared.

                      Perhaps this problem will go away if you try a pfSense 2.0 snapshot build; it has newer device drivers than pfSense 1.2.3 and your motherboard has a pretty new chipset.

                      If you can't go to pfSense 2.0 or it doesn't help you could try removing devices to see what makes a difference. Can you put one or more of your disks on atapci1? Can you replace (at least for test) the 4 port NIC?

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                      • jimpJ
                        jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                        last edited by

                        vmstat -i
                        

                        Will show what devices are on an IRQ (to a point..)

                        I didn't catch the sf1 in there earlier, but that is an Adaptec ethernet controller… I don't think I've ever seen one of those before, not sure what kind of quality it is (or the driver for that matter) so as wallabybob mentioned it could be that as well.

                        Moving the devices around a bit may still prove helpful, at least in narrowing down exactly which is to blame.

                        It might be worth relocating both of those drives to the primary sata controller instead of ports 4/5, they are obviously connected through a different internal path. sf1 may behave itself if it doesn't have to fight for the bus.

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                        • X
                          xenonsky
                          last edited by

                          I seems to have the exact same problem on my new 1.2.3 install on i3 540 and thru the Web GUI it showed a constant 20+% CPU.
                          When view thru "top -SH" command I get the following which showed "irq19: atapci1+" taking up 89% on CPU0

                          top -SH

                          last pid: 29754;  load averages:  0.00,  0.01,  0.00                                up 0+05:13:43  06:09:48
                          87 processes:  6 running, 66 sleeping, 15 waiting
                          CPU:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.1% system, 23.0% interrupt, 76.8% idle
                          Mem: 23M Active, 9280K Inact, 37M Wired, 280K Cache, 16M Buf, 2864M Free
                          Swap: 8192M Total, 8192M Free

                          PID USERNAME PRI NICE  SIZE    RES STATE  C  TIME  WCPU COMMAND
                            11 root    171 ki31    0K    8K CPU3  3 311:54 100.00% idle: cpu3
                            13 root    171 ki31    0K    8K CPU1  1 311:45 100.00% idle: cpu1
                            12 root    171 ki31    0K    8K RUN    2 308:51 100.00% idle: cpu2
                            38 root    -64    -    0K    8K CPU0  0 264:54 89.79% irq19: atapci1+
                            14 root    171 ki31    0K    8K RUN    0  47:24 11.87% idle: cpu0

                          The "atacontrol list" command output I got:

                          atacontrol list

                          ATA channel 0:
                              Master:      no device present
                              Slave:      no device present
                          ATA channel 1:
                              Master:      no device present
                              Slave:      no device present
                          ATA channel 2:
                              Master:      no device present
                              Slave:      no device present
                          ATA channel 3:
                              Master:  ad6 <st3500514ns sn11="">SATA revision 2.x
                              Slave:      no device present
                          ATA channel 4:
                              Master: acd0 <hl-dt-st dvdram="" gh24ns50="" xp02="">SATA revision 1.x
                              Slave:      no device present
                          ATA channel 5:
                              Master:      no device present
                              Slave:      no device present
                          ATA channel 6:
                              Master:      no device present
                              Slave:      no device present

                          and "vmstat -i" output I got:

                          vmstat -i

                          interrupt                          total      rate
                          irq16: ehci0                        159          0
                          irq19: atapci1+              1281400417      67541
                          irq23: ehci1                          55          0
                          cpu0: timer                    37942915      1999
                          irq256: re0                      364280        19
                          irq257: re1                      353607        18
                          cpu2: timer                    37933878      1999
                          cpu3: timer                    37933877      1999
                          cpu1: timer                    37933878      1999
                          Total                        1433863066      75577

                          So I'm wondering should I also try to relocate my SATA Hard disk to ATA channel 1 and DVD rom to ATA channel 2?

                          Any suggestion ?

                          Thanks.</hl-dt-st></st3500514ns>

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                          • W
                            wallabybob
                            last edited by

                            Please post the dmesg output so we can see more about your configuration, particularly what devices are using irq19.

                            If you have the option to do so, i would go into the BIOS, record the mode of all the disk controllers and change them all to legacy rather than raid or AHCI and see if that makes a difference. Or try a snapshot build of pfSense 2.0.

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                            • X
                              xenonsky
                              last edited by

                              This is very interesting after I poke around i can actually see that the CPU hog for IRQ19 is used by "Intel ATA Controller" as i can see it during the system bootup and it scroll by the screen.
                              then I check my system BIOS and my on-board SATA controller is already using IDE mode (non AHCI mode). So i went and disable just about everything I can find under the BIOS related to AHCI or disk mode and access, but nothing will make the CPU hog of IRQ19 drop. So finally I decided to change my SATA controller from IDE mode to AHCI mode, then after a reboot, my CPU usage is down to about 0% now. So this is interesting that it should be set to AHCI mode on this hardware combination.

                              This has been a good learning experience.

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