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

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    • 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.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • 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.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 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.

                    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?

                      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

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • 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.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • 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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                                  • W
                                    wallabybob
                                    last edited by

                                    @clarknova:

                                    I recently commissioned an Intel DH57JG board and I'm seeing the same issue.

                                    Which build of pfSense?

                                    If you haven't tried a snapshot build of 2.1 It might be worth doing so to take advantage of more up to date device drivers.

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                                    • C
                                      clarknova
                                      last edited by

                                      2.0.1

                                      I have considered moving to 2.1, I'm just not really excited about testing software on this particular machine. I'll have to try my options though, one early morning at a time ;)

                                      db

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                                      • C
                                        clarknova
                                        last edited by

                                        I tried 2.1 but the foray was brief, as some show-stopping bugs had me rebooting within minutes. The good news is that by rebooting into 2.0.1 without a single USB device connected, this problem does not occur for me, even after 20 days uptime.

                                        Still looking forward to a snapshot that lets me use a keyboard without the accompanying IRQ storm.

                                        db

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                                        • B
                                          Bai Shen
                                          last edited by

                                          I've just been ignoring it for the time being as it hasn't affected the functionality AFAIK.  I need to do an upgrade and add some more nics.  I might give 2.1 a shot.  Not sure.

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