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

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
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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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                • 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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