Dissable RRD Graphs

VaCUm

I'm running pfSense at home on a old Pentium II and i use a CF-card instead of a hard drive. I have changed /etc/platform to wrap and disabled logging to minimize disk activity.

It worked great with a older build but since i upgraded to Beta 3 the machine reads/writes to the CF all the time.
I want to minimize the disk activity so the CF won't fail and i suspect that it's the RRD Graph that logs the network load.

Is there a way to disable the RRD Graphs or make it log to a Ram disk? It would actually be nice to have logging on a ram disk.

sullrich

It is logging to a ram disk, its not logging to the compact flash card.

VaCUm

What is it doing if it's not the RRD-thingie? I'm starting to get worried.

Is there a way to check what the machine is reading/writing to disk?

sullrich

Type mount at a prompt. It's most likely read-only and thus cannot be written to.

VaCUm

mount

/dev/ad0s1a on / (ufs, local)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local)
devfs on /var/dhcpd/dev (devfs, local)
/dev/md1 on /var/db/rrd (ufs, local, soft-updates)

Shouldn't it say Read only then?

sullrich

Mine does…

mount

/dev/ufs/pfSense on / (ufs, local, read-only)

Not sure what you have hosed, but you have hosed something good!

VaCUm

# cat /etc/platform
wrap

# cat /etc/fstab 
# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
/dev/ad0s1a             /               ufs     rw              1       1

should i change rw to ro?

sullrich

Worth a shot.

I should add that this is not supported!

VaCUm

I know it's unsupported. I found the information about changing platform to wrap in your wiki btw (but i can't find it at the moment).

btw. when i changed platform to wrap the system stopped writing to disk. Exactly what happened when i did that? Does the system look in that file and changes som settings at boot time?

sullrich

Yes.

VaCUm

Then i will change it back to "pfSense", reboot, change it to wrap and reboot again. Hopefully it will change those settings and it will work as i want it to do.

sullrich

pfSense is full read write, not read only!

wrap or embedded are the only read only options….

VaCUm

Ok.

If i disable logging, platform is set to wrap and the RRD is logging to a ram disk what then could be reading/writing?

The CF-card will start failing if the system writes to the same block every 4 second in 14 days (i think). I'm starting to get worried about the machine.

one more thing. What is "missing" in the embedded version?

sullrich

Logging is always sent to a ram disk, regardless so its not going to affect the CF. RRD logs to a ramdisk, regardless, so its not going to affect the CF.

Embedded is lacking package support.

VaCUm

Can i use my backed up configuration from this setup if i install the embedded version?

sullrich

I would think so, yes.

billm

@VaCUm:

I'm running pfSense at home on a old Pentium II and i use a CF-card instead of a hard drive. I have changed /etc/platform to wrap and disabled logging to minimize disk activity.

You want 'embedded' not wrap btw.

–Bill