Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    High cpu usage on 2.3.x

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    5 Posts 4 Posters 1.8k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • D
      DutchSamurai
      last edited by

      Hi,

      Haven't touched pfsense for a while so it was a pretty big shock to see the all renewed GUI the other day :D

      However I noticed cpu usage increased 5x ~ 10x times compared to 2.2.6. I'm running pfsense inside virtualbox.

      2.2.6 essentially had 0% cpu usage (viewed from vm host) with sometimes a short spike to 1 ~ 3% when idling. However 2.3.x is constantly hovering around 5 ~ 10%. I tried a clean install but the result is the same. This is on a bare install with nothing configured or any additional packages installed.

      Is this a known issue? Anybody knows what's causing this?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • R
        richardd
        last edited by

        I have a pfSense VM running in Parallels on an iMac. It has 0% idle CPU usage as seen from inside pfSense, but around 8% as seen from the host. While that may be high, I am more concerned of pfSense 2.3.x using a lot of CPU in general.

        I set up a simple GIF (6in4) tunnel server using pfSense 2.3.1 on a VPS, and it saturated the CPU at around 500 Mbit/s. Then I installed Debian 8 Linux on the same VPS and the CPU usage went down to just 4% for tunneling 500 Mbit/s, so for now I'm using Linux for my 6in4 server.

        My VPS provider told me they have had the same experience using HAProxy on pfSense vs Linux.

        I didn't test older versions in this situation, so I can't compare 2.2.x to 2.3.x.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • H
          Harvy66
          last edited by

          just a random guess some someone who doesn't use PFSense in a VM, but if the VM network drivers are polling, they could create a constant load. Generic VM drivers are typically HORRIBLE, but they work.  Make sure your guest VM supports the native host driver model.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • D
            DutchSamurai
            last edited by

            I've never had any problems with virtualbox before and 2.2 idles at 0 ~ 2% so I don't think its VM related.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • C
              cmb
              last edited by

              Guessing that's probably while you have something continually loading the dashboard? The dashboard is significantly more CPU-intensive than it used to be especially if you have a lot of widgets, as more things dynamically update.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • First post
                Last post
              Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.