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    Very high CPU usage every 15 minutes

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • NollipfSenseN Offline
      NollipfSense
      last edited by

      I just looked at mine...there is no way to update every 15mins; however, I also using the latest devel version. I wish I could use more of my CPU (only 2%) and RAM ( 18% of 16GB).

      pfSense+ 23.09 Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF Quadcore i7 dual Raid-ZFS 128GB-SSD 32GB-RAM PCI-Intel i350-t4 NIC, -Intel QAT 8950.
      pfSense+ 23.09 VM-Proxmox, Dell Precision Xeon-W2155 Nvme 500GB-ZFS 128GB-RAM PCIe-Intel i350-t4, Intel QAT-8950, P-cloud.

      provelsP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • provelsP Offline
        provels @NollipfSense
        last edited by

        @NollipfSense You can, but it would require editing the cron task.

        Peder

        MAIN - pfSense+ 24.11-RELEASE - Adlink MXE-5401, i7, 16 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD. 500 GB HDD for SyslogNG
        BACKUP - pfSense+ 23.01-RELEASE - Hyper-V Virtual Machine, Gen 1, 2 v-CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 8GB VHDX (Dynamic)

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        • stephenw10S Offline
          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
          last edited by

          How large is the rules.debug file?

          What CPU is that?

          That looks pretty extreme.

          Steve

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          • V Offline
            ViniciusBr @stephenw10
            last edited by

            @stephenw10 said in Very high CPU usage every 15 minutes:

            How large is the rules.debug file?

            What CPU is that?

            That looks pretty extreme.

            Steve

            Yes, it is pretty bad, looking forward to fix it.

            Where is this file located? /tmp? If yes it is currently 38K
            38 -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 38K Sep 15 20:45 /tmp/rules.debug

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            • V Offline
              ViniciusBr
              last edited by

              CPU Type Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU G470 @ 2.00GHz
              AES-NI CPU Crypto: No

              Thanks!

              provelsP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • provelsP Offline
                provels @ViniciusBr
                last edited by

                @ViniciusBr Are you using a ramdisk or hard drive for /tmp?

                Peder

                MAIN - pfSense+ 24.11-RELEASE - Adlink MXE-5401, i7, 16 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD. 500 GB HDD for SyslogNG
                BACKUP - pfSense+ 23.01-RELEASE - Hyper-V Virtual Machine, Gen 1, 2 v-CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 8GB VHDX (Dynamic)

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                • V Offline
                  ViniciusBr
                  last edited by

                  Same HD, one for everything... this started to happen not long ago.

                  Before all were ok.

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                  • stephenw10S Offline
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Hmm, how long does it take to reload the filter? I have a 35k ruleset here and it does use ~100% of one CPU core while it reloads but it takes maybe 1s to do it.

                    You have something that is triggering the filter reload every 15mins. Check the system logs.

                    Steve

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                    • V Offline
                      ViniciusBr @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10 said in Very high CPU usage every 15 minutes:

                      Hmm, how long does it take to reload the filter? I have a 35k ruleset here and it does use ~100% of one CPU core while it reloads but it takes maybe 1s to do it.

                      How can I check how long it is taking to reload?

                      About the logs: cannot find anything useful there.

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                      • stephenw10S Offline
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        Go to Status > Filter Reload, hit the button there. If you have top open in a console at the time you can see how it actually behaves.

                        Steve

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                        • V Offline
                          ViniciusBr @stephenw10
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10 said in Very high CPU usage every 15 minutes:

                          Go to Status > Filter Reload, hit the button there. If you have top open in a console at the time you can see how it actually behaves.

                          Steve

                          Ok, so that is the way of reproducing the issue!

                          Got the same high CPU usage, just not sure how to troubleshoot from there.

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                          • stephenw10S Offline
                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                            last edited by

                            Does it show any errors on the reload page? Does it take more than a few seconds?

                            Something is triggering that reload, probably a result of something else being updated like an alias perhaps. I'd be amased if nothing shows in the system log though. Can we see it?

                            Steve

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                            • V Offline
                              ViniciusBr @stephenw10
                              last edited by ViniciusBr

                              @stephenw10 said in Very high CPU usage every 15 minutes:

                              Does it show any errors on the reload page? Does it take more than a few seconds?

                              Something is triggering that reload, probably a result of something else being updated like an alias perhaps. I'd be amased if nothing shows in the system log though. Can we see it?

                              Steve

                              It is taking around 25 seconds to complete.

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                              • stephenw10S Offline
                                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                last edited by

                                Hmm, no errors that jump out there. It's quite a long list though. 25s seems waaay longer than I might expect. It may be resolving a load of things.

                                I meant the system log though. Covering at least, say, 30mins so we can see a reload cycle.

                                Steve

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                                • V Offline
                                  ViniciusBr
                                  last edited by

                                  I don't see anything strange:

                                  pf-logs.JPG

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                                  • stephenw10S Offline
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by

                                    Hmm, sure looks like it's reloading the rules. And not at 1h intervals.

                                    If you install the cron package when cron jobs are listed? (or just check the crontab)

                                    Steve

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                                    • V Offline
                                      ViniciusBr
                                      last edited by

                                      Here we go:

                                      pf-cron.JPG

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                                      • stephenw10S Offline
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by

                                        Ok so it's the filter_configure_sync cronjob. That is created if you have scheduled firewall rules.

                                        Do you need those rules?

                                        Of course it shouldn't be anything like the hit you're seeing to run it.

                                        Steve

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                                        • V Offline
                                          ViniciusBr
                                          last edited by

                                          @stephenw10 said in Very high CPU usage every 15 minutes:

                                          filter_configure_sync cronjob. That is created if you have scheduled firewall rules

                                          I just deleted the schedule and removed the schedule from the rule, I will monitor and will get back here.

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                                          • V Offline
                                            ViniciusBr
                                            last edited by

                                            So the 15 minutes spike is over, but the filter reload is still consuming loads of CPU, not as before, but still high (yellow are is after the schedule deletion):
                                            pf-cpu.JPG

                                            Checking the logs I can only see the filter reload:

                                            pf-logs2.JPG

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