{irq16: em1 ehci0} taking up 75% of cpu

Bai Shen

I would expect to be able to see the sysctl OIDs but all I see is:


[2.0-RC3][root@pfsense.fire.box]/root(1): sysctl hw.usb
hw.usb.no_boot_wait: 0
hw.usb.debug: 0
hw.usb.usb_lang_mask: 255
hw.usb.usb_lang_id: 9
hw.usb.template: 0
hw.usb.power_timeout: 30
hw.usb.uath.regdomain: 0
hw.usb.uath.countrycode: 0
hw.usb.urtw.preamble_mode: 2
hw.usb.urtw.debug: 0
hw.usb.ucom.cons_baud: 9600
hw.usb.ucom.cons_unit: -1

No EHCI at all.

Steve

I get hw.usb.ehci.no_hs 1 when I do it. So it's picking it up. I guess it's time to try the others.

Bai Shen

None of them worked.

Also, my keyboard no longer works.

Any other suggestions?

wallabybob

@stephenw10:

The sysctl OIDs are listed in the 8.1 source code, here, but I don't have them on my system. Perhaps because I'm not using USB. :-\

Some device drivers don't register sysctls until they have successfully attached at least one device. I don't know the specifics of the USB sysctls.

@Bai:

None of them worked.

Also, my keyboard no longer works.

Any other suggestions?

Suggestions:

Use a motherboard with a chipset that has been available for at least six months at the time of release of FreeBSD 8.1. (I recall that I saw an older pfSense release lock up on startup on a motherboard with AMD chipset if USB was enabled. The next version of pfSense which had a more recent FreeBSD worked fine on the same motherboard when USB was enabled.)
Keep searching - maybe a FreeBSD user has found a solution for FreeBSD 8.1
Ignore it, you still have three working cores which is probably much more than you need.
Disable motherboard USB entirely and use a PCI USB 2.0 card (which almost certainly will have a USB chipset that has been around for a while and consequently has well debugged drivers). I don't know if the BIOS will support this.
Disable motherboard USB and set BIOS to ignore "no keyboard". What do you need the keyboard for once the system is configured.

stephenw10

@wallabybob:

Some device drivers don't register sysctls until they have successfully attached at least one device. I don't know the specifics of the USB sysctls.

That's what I thought, and yet:


[2.0-RC3][root@pfsense.fire.box]/root(2): sysctl -a | grep ehci
dev.usbus.2.%parent: ehci0
dev.ehci.0.%desc: Intel 6300ESB USB 2.0 controller
dev.ehci.0.%driver: ehci
dev.ehci.0.%location: slot=29 function=7
dev.ehci.0.%pnpinfo: vendor=0x8086 device=0x25ad subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x25ad class=0x0c0320
dev.ehci.0.%parent: pci0

Hmmm. :-\

@Bai Shen. If it has disabled your keyboard it is clearly doing something. Do you still have Legacy USB disabled in the bios? Perhaps you have ended up disabling ehci when that is all that was left still functioning.

Steve

Bai Shen

@wallabybob:

Keep searching - maybe a FreeBSD user has found a solution for FreeBSD 8.1

Not as far as I can tell. There's a bug filed for it, but no resolution so far.

@wallabybob:

Ignore it, you still have three working cores which is probably much more than you need.

That's what I'm doing. The biggest annoyance is that it prevents the processor from idling and therefore uses more power than it should.

@wallabybob:

Disable motherboard USB entirely and use a PCI USB 2.0 card (which almost certainly will have a USB chipset that has been around for a while and consequently has well debugged drivers). I don't know if the BIOS will support this.

Maybe. But right now I'm using all of the PCI slots for NICs. I'll be picking up PCIe NICs later, but for now I'm using the ones I have.

@wallabybob:

Disable motherboard USB and set BIOS to ignore "no keyboard". What do you need the keyboard for once the system is configured.

I've thought about doing that. But I've had instances before where I had to use the console on the actual box to reset/change configurations. So I'm hesitant to do that atm. Plus I'm not sure how it'll work to turn it back on as there's no other way to connect a keyboard.

Bai Shen

@stephenw10:

@Bai Shen. If it has disabled your keyboard it is clearly doing something. Do you still have Legacy USB disabled in the bios? Perhaps you have ended up disabling ehci when that is all that was left still functioning.

Steve

No, I made sure to turn legacy and usb3 back on before messing with the loader.conf.local.

stephenw10

Serial console instead of keyboard?
I would definitely leave USB3 disabled.
Perhaps you can force one of the two devices onto a different IRQ.

Steve

Edit: Assuming you are still using the DH67CL, are you running the lastest bios?

Edit: It seems (though I can't find detailed instruction) that you should be able to set IRQ 16 as unavailable to PCI auto configuration. That should force your LAN card onto a different IRQ.

Bai Shen

@stephenw10:

Serial console instead of keyboard?

I don't think it has a serial port, but I could be wrong. I don't have any infrastructure to support that either.

@stephenw10:

I would definitely leave USB3 disabled.

How come?

@stephenw10:

Perhaps you can force one of the two devices onto a different IRQ.

Steve

Edit: Assuming you are still using the DH67CL, are you running the lastest bios?

Edit: It seems (though I can't find detailed instruction) that you should be able to set IRQ 16 as unavailable to PCI auto configuration. That should force your LAN card onto a different IRQ.

Yep, I'm running the latest bios.

I'll have to look through the bios at the PCI config. I don't recall seeing anything like that before, but I wasn't looking for it. How does setting the NIC to a different IRQ fix the problem? Wouldn't I still get the interrupts from the ehci?

stephenw10

@Bai:

@stephenw10:

I would definitely leave USB3 disabled.

How come?

Because it's highly probable that FreeBSD didn't support it when 8.1 was released. Does it even support it now?

@Bai:

I'll have to look through the bios at the PCI config. I don't recall seeing anything like that before, but I wasn't looking for it. How does setting the NIC to a different IRQ fix the problem? Wouldn't I still get the interrupts from the ehci?

It may be an IRQ conflict causing the interrupt storm.

@Technical:

Any interrupts set to Available in Setup are considered to be available for
use by the add-in card.

Implies that you can set to unavailable.

Steve

Bai Shen

@stephenw10:

Because it's highly probable that FreeBSD didn't support it when 8.1 was released. Does it even support it now?

No idea. I'm not using them, but figured I'd leave them on so I don't plug something in down the road and wonder why it's not working. :)

@stephenw10:

It may be an IRQ conflict causing the interrupt storm.

Ah, gotcha.

@stephenw10:

@Technical:

Any interrupts set to Available in Setup are considered to be available for
use by the add-in card.

Implies that you can set to unavailable.

Steve

-nods- I'll take a look when I get home.

Bai Shen

I ended up being sidetracked by other things and never messed with the box any more. This weekend, I shut it down to rearrange some cables. Since I brought it back up, I haven't seen the problem again. No idea what the difference is as I don't recall changing anything.

Just wanted to give y'all an update.

stephenw10

Strange.
Perhaps something to do with the cable routing as you suggest.

Steve

Bai Shen

@stephenw10:

Strange.
Perhaps something to do with the cable routing as you suggest.

Steve

All I did was unplug the Kill-A-Watt from the power cable. Dunno.

clarknova

This looks like a problem I had on an i3 550 that went out the door. I believe the fix was to turn off USB legacy support in the BIOS.

Bai Shen

Well, I rebooted due to updating to 2.0-RELEASE and it's back. Only now it's irq11

wallabybob

You are now seeing {irq11: em1 ehci0} taking a lot of CPU?

Please post output of pfSense shell command vmstat -i

Bai Shen

@wallabybob:

You are now seeing {irq11: em1 ehci0} taking a lot of CPU?

Yes.

@wallabybob:

Please post output of pfSense shell command vmstat -i

Okay. I'll do that when I get back to the machine.

wallabybob

That the irq has changed from 16 to 11 suggests to me you have (possibly inadvertently) disabled multiprocessing in the BIOS or disabled the IOAPIC or disabled acpi.

thesidetalker

@stephenw10:

EHCI provides access for 'high speed' devices as opposed to low and full speed.

The ehci driver has some tunables you could add to /boot/loader.conf.local to try.

LOADER TUNABLES

Tunables can be set at the loader(8) prompt before booting the kernel or
stored in loader.conf(5).

hw.usb.ehci.lostintrbug
This tunable enables the lost interrupt quirk. The default value
is 0 (off).

hw.usb.ehci.iaadbug
This tunable enables the EHCI doorbell quirk. The default value
is 0 (off).

hw.usb.ehci.no_hs
This tunable disables USB devices to attach like HIGH-speed ones
and will force all attached devices to attach to the FULL- or
LOW-speed companion controller. The default value is 0 (off).

Steve

Steve I had a similar problem to the OP on my X9SCV build. {irq16: ehci0} was using ~50% of one cpu. I did as you suggested and added hw.usb.ehci.no_hs="1" to loader.conf and it seems to have fixed it. I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks

stephenw10

Glad that worked for you and thanks for reporting back. :)

Steve