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

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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

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

      Steve

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      • B
        Bai Shen
        last edited by

        @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.

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        • C
          clarknova
          last edited by

          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.

          db

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          • B
            Bai Shen
            last edited by

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

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            • W
              wallabybob
              last edited by

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

              Please post output of pfSense shell command vmstat -i

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • B
                Bai Shen
                last edited by

                @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.

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                • W
                  wallabybob
                  last edited by

                  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.

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                  • T
                    thesidetalker
                    last edited by

                    @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

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                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

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

                      Steve

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                      • V
                        vlad-i-mir
                        last edited by

                        Dear All, I've read this topic carefully and tried many ways to solve this problem. But there is no result till now.

                        I use pfsense 2.0.1 release (amd64) with ZOTAC®LGA 1155 Z68-ITX, Intel Celeron G530, Box, 2x2.4 GHz, 2 GB DDR3, HDD WD2500AAKX, 2 x onboard Realtek RTL8111E and AzureWave AR5B95. My ISP gives me 1 Gbps full duplex uplink and static IP. So everything good and I have realy 800-900 Mbps throughput, but only one bad. Last time I noticed interrupts on CPU 30-40%, and I saw this on irq16: ath0 ehci0. I disabled USB3, disabled Audio-controller and other unused things in BIOS. No result. Then I removed the WiFi card AR5B95 and CPU load slow down to 20-30%. I tried to change loader.conf with hw.usb.ehci.no_hs="1" and rebooted the system. But no result again. This is a link to RRD graphs.

                        Here is the output from $ vmstat -i and $ devinfo -v, to illustrate the problem:

                        interrupt total rate
                        irq16: ehci0 6679556627 168445     ------> + approx. 450 000 every 1 second
                        irq19: atapci0+ 57770 1
                        irq23: ehci1 79325 2
                        cpu0: timer 79305108 1999
                        irq256: re0 98275744 2478
                        irq257: re1 96862546 2442
                        cpu1: timer 79304926 1999
                        Total 7033442046 177370
                        
                        $ devinfo -v
                        nexus0
                        .......
                        acpi0
                        .......
                        pcib0 pnpinfo _HID=PNP0A08 _UID=0 at handle=\_SB_.PCI0
                        pci0
                        .......
                        ehci0 pnpinfo vendor=0x8086 device=0x1c2d subvendor=0x19da subdevice=0xa198 class=0x0c0320 at slot=26 function=0 handle=\_SB_.PCI0.USBE
                        usbus0
                        uhub0
                        uhub2 pnpinfo vendor=0x8087 product=0x0024 devclass=0x09 devsubclass=0x00 sernum="" release=0x0000 intclass=0x09 intsubclass=0x00 at bus=1 hubaddr=1 port=0 devaddr=2 interface=0
                        .......
                        ehci1 pnpinfo vendor=0x8086 device=0x1c26 subvendor=0x19da subdevice=0xa198 class=0x0c0320 at slot=29 function=0 handle=\_SB_.PCI0.EUSB
                        usbus1
                        uhub1
                        uhub3 pnpinfo vendor=0x8087 product=0x0024 devclass=0x09 devsubclass=0x00 sernum="" release=0x0000 intclass=0x09 intsubclass=0x00 at bus=1 hubaddr=1 port=1 devaddr=2 interface=0
                        .......
                        

                        So may be anybody know what cause this problem, or what I have to do again to track down this? I'm not very experienced with FreeBSD so I don't know what to try next.

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                        • V
                          vlad-i-mir
                          last edited by

                          Update. Problem solved!
                          Point is that motherboard Z68-ITX has video only with HDMI 1.4a or with DisplayPort (mini-DP). So I connected LCD TV in to HDMI, installed pfsense, assigned interfaces, entered commands for loader.conf, etc. But I did not disconnected the HDMI after it.

                          Then on the russian pfSense forum guys asked me about HDMI/mini-DP and suggested to disconnect LCD. I did it without shutting down the router and looked into vmstat -i. The interrupts appeared on irq16: ehci0 immediately after I disconnected the cable.

                          After I disconnected the display then I rebooted the router. After it I haven't seen the problem again.

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                          • stephenw10S
                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                            last edited by

                            Thanks for reporting back.
                            Interesting solution, I wonder if the HDMI implementation on that board supports an ethernet connection?

                            Steve

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                            • B
                              Bai Shen
                              last edited by

                              So my machine is still acting up.  What's weird is that it works fine for about an hour and then the problems start.

                              Also, I've since upgraded to 2.0.1 and now it doesn't get past the em1: MSI Interrupt message unless I select to boot with ACPI(I think) disabled.  Not sure if that has any bearing on things or not.

                              I haven't looked too much into it as everything seems to be working correctly.  The only problem is the extra power it's using.

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                              • B
                                Bai Shen
                                last edited by

                                @wallabybob:

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

                                Please post output of pfSense shell command vmstat -i

                                Just realized I never did the vmstat check.  So here it is.

                                interrupt                          total       rate
                                irq16: em1 ehci0               267777779      57797
                                irq17: em2                         11528          2
                                irq18: em3                         11468          2
                                irq19: atapci0                     37902          8
                                irq23: ehci1                        9358          2
                                cpu0: timer                      9309748       2009
                                irq256: em0                        53580         11
                                cpu1: timer                      9309520       2009
                                Total                          286520883      61843

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                                • W
                                  wallabybob
                                  last edited by

                                  The vmstat output shows a very high interrupt rate on irq16 again.

                                  If you don't have a high packet rate on em1 and are bothered by the high interrupt rates I would be inclined to see if I could stop use of of irq16 and see how things change. For example, move USB devices to different USB sockets in an attempt to move them to ehci1, the other USB controller. The BIOS might allow disabling of USB. Does that change the interrupt rate on irq16? Disable em1. Does that change interrupt rate on irq16?

                                  You could also try installing a snapshot build of pfSense 2.1. It is based on a much more recent release of FreeBSD which might work better with your hardware.

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                                  • stephenw10S
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by

                                    @Bai:

                                    Also, I've since upgraded to 2.0.1 and now it doesn't get past the em1: MSI Interrupt message unless I select to boot with ACPI(I think) disabled.  Not sure if that has any bearing on things or not.

                                    You could try setting:
                                    hw.pci.enable_msix=0
                                    or
                                    hw.pci.enable_msi=0
                                    in /boot/loader.conf.local.

                                    At this point I think I would try one of the 2.1 snapshots since it's likely to have better support for your motherboard.

                                    Steve

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                                    • B
                                      Bai Shen
                                      last edited by

                                      @wallabybob:

                                      The vmstat output shows a very high interrupt rate on irq16 again.

                                      If you don't have a high packet rate on em1 and are bothered by the high interrupt rates I would be inclined to see if I could stop use of of irq16 and see how things change. For example, move USB devices to different USB sockets in an attempt to move them to ehci1, the other USB controller. The BIOS might allow disabling of USB. Does that change the interrupt rate on irq16? Disable em1. Does that change interrupt rate on irq16?

                                      You could also try installing a snapshot build of pfSense 2.1. It is based on a much more recent release of FreeBSD which might work better with your hardware.

                                      I tried disabling the USB devices in the BIOS previously with no luck.  Also some of the other usb settings.  I haven't tried changing the USB ports, though.  I'll give that a shot.

                                      @stephenw10:

                                      @Bai:

                                      Also, I've since upgraded to 2.0.1 and now it doesn't get past the em1: MSI Interrupt message unless I select to boot with ACPI(I think) disabled.  Not sure if that has any bearing on things or not.

                                      You could try setting:
                                      hw.pci.enable_msix=0
                                      or
                                      hw.pci.enable_msi=0
                                      in /boot/loader.conf.local.

                                      At this point I think I would try one of the 2.1 snapshots since it's likely to have better support for your motherboard.

                                      Steve

                                      What do those settings do?

                                      I'll give 2.1 a shot when I rebuild my box.  I have some PCIe nics that I want to move my higher traffic segments to.

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                                      • stephenw10S
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by

                                        They control how the pci bus handles interupts:
                                        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Signaled_Interrupts
                                        Disabling both of them forces legacy interupts. If you card or bus controller is not fully compliant or just has a buggy driver it could be causing this. I only suggested it because you said:

                                        it doesn't get past the em1: MSI Interrupt message

                                        What is this message?

                                        Steve

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                                        • B
                                          Bai Shen
                                          last edited by

                                          @stephenw10:

                                          They control how the pci bus handles interupts:
                                          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Signaled_Interrupts
                                          Disabling both of them forces legacy interupts. If you card or bus controller is not fully compliant or just has a buggy driver it could be causing this. I only suggested it because you said:

                                          it doesn't get past the em1: MSI Interrupt message

                                          What is this message?

                                          Steve

                                          Unfortunately, I don't remember more than that.  And I'd have to reboot the box to find out.  It's only been doing this since I updated it.  Not sure what changed.

                                          I'll try changing the settings and see if that makes a difference.

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                                          • C
                                            clarknova
                                            last edited by

                                            Does anybody have an update on this? I recently commissioned an Intel DH57JG board and I'm seeing the same issue. Disabling legacy USB in the BIOS, and setting hw.usb.ehci.no_hs="1" in /boot/loader.conf.local both make the problem go away for a few hours, and then it comes back. This is a production system, so I'd like to know if anybody has it licked before I spend the next week getting up at 4 am to try one option at a time.

                                            db

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