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    High CPU-usage with a Intel Core i3?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • K
      KrPacMan
      last edited by

      Ops, sorry. Here's the full output:

      _$ top -SH
      last pid: 59280;  load averages:  0.22,  0.11,  0.04  up 42+20:33:39    19:09:33
      84 processes:  2 running, 63 sleeping, 19 waiting

      Mem: 70M Active, 26M Inact, 38M Wired, 92K Cache, 31M Buf, 1729M Free
      Swap: 4096M Total, 4096M Free

      PID USERNAME PRI NICE  SIZE    RES STATE    TIME  WCPU COMMAND
        34 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT  823.4H 96.00% irq19: sf1 atapci1
        11 root    171 ki31    0K    8K RUN    189.3H 10.79% idle: cpu0
        25 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT  380:59  0.00% irq18: sf0 atapci0
        26 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT  202:23  0.00% irq16: sf3 ehci0
        15 root      44    -    0K    8K -      125:28  0.00% yarrow
        12 root    -32    -    0K    8K WAIT    52:33  0.00% swi4: clock sio
        33 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT    17:49  0.00% irq22: ral0
      24434 root      8  20  6564K  4844K wait    9:03  0.00% sh
        442 root    -58    0 21076K 18960K bpf      2:31  0.00% tcpdump
        420 root      44    0  3268K  1148K select  2:01  0.00% syslogd
          4 root      -8    -    0K    8K -        1:57  0.00% g_up
        20 root      8    -    0K    8K -        1:39  0.00% thread taskq
          5 root      -8    -    0K    8K -        1:16  0.00% g_down
        443 root      -8    0  3156K  784K piperd  1:05  0.00% logger
        988 root      8  20  3156K  796K nanslp  1:04  0.00% check_reload_status
        48 root      20    -    0K    8K syncer  0:46  0.00% syncer
        613 root      4    0  6168K  3128K kqread  0:30  0.00% lighttpd
          3 root      -8    -    0K    8K -        0:25  0.00% g_event_

      Seems to be problems with an IRQ, maybe from the Ralink or SiS-nics?

      Panda GateDefender Performa 8100 (Portwell NR-5500) with Pfsense 2.1 :: blog

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      • jimpJ
        jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
        last edited by

        grep atapci1 /var/log/dmesg.boot

        It's probably an HDD controller, so something is making the HDD chew up lots of CPU.

        You might try adjusting any IDE/SATA options you have in the BIOS.

        Remember: Upvote with the 👍 button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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        • K
          KrPacMan
          last edited by

          Very strange. SF1 is one of the server NIC:s with four ports.

          Sorry to take your time, but i'm terrible with FreeBSD :-/ The grep command gave me this:

          atapci1: <intel ata="" controller="">port 0xf090-0xf097,0xf080-0xf083,0xf070-0xf077,0xf060-0xf063,0xf050-0xf05f,0xf040-0xf04f irq 19 at device 31.2 on pci0
          atapci1: [ITHREAD]
          ata4: <ata 0="" channel="">on atapci1
          ata5: <ata 1="" channel="">on atapci1</ata></ata></intel>

          Could it be the HDD that has bad sectors etc?

          Panda GateDefender Performa 8100 (Portwell NR-5500) with Pfsense 2.1 :: blog

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          • jimpJ
            jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
            last edited by

            Is the drive actually on that controller? Is anything?

            atacontrol list
            

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            • K
              KrPacMan
              last edited by

              ATA channel 0:
                  Master:      no device present
                  Slave:      no device present
              ATA channel 1:
                  Master:      no device present
                  Slave:      no device present
              ATA channel 2:
                  Master:      no device present
                  Slave:      no device present
              ATA channel 3:
                  Master:      no device present
                  Slave:      no device present
              ATA channel 4:
                  Master:  ad8 <st980811as 3.alb="">SATA revision 1.x
                  Slave:      no device present
              ATA channel 5:
                  Master: acd0 <optiarc dvd="" rw="" ad-5240s="" 1.03="">SATA revision 1.x
                  Slave:      no device present</optiarc></st980811as>

              Panda GateDefender Performa 8100 (Portwell NR-5500) with Pfsense 2.1 :: blog

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              • jimpJ
                jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                last edited by

                So it could be either the HDD or the DVD

                You could try moving the DVD drive to another controller, see if the problem stays the same or follows the DVD drive.

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                • K
                  KrPacMan
                  last edited by

                  Thanks! I'll try to change SATA-port and unplug the DVD. Very strange problem since the controller is the standard ICH11 from Intel.

                  Panda GateDefender Performa 8100 (Portwell NR-5500) with Pfsense 2.1 :: blog

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                  • W
                    wallabybob
                    last edited by

                    This line

                    34 root    -68    -    0K    8K WAIT  823.4H 96.00% irq19: sf1 atapci1

                    shows its the irq19 handler thats chewing up most of the CPU. It shows that AT LEAST devices sf1 and atapci1 use irq19. There may be others.

                    One possible explanation is that the BIOS has either incorrectly calculated the IRQs or has provided incorrect information to FreeBSD such that FreeBSD thinks that some device which really uses IRQ19 uses (say IRQ17). If this is happening then the handler for such device would be on IRQ17 and when the device interrupts on IRQ19 there is no handler there to clear the interrupt condition and so on exit from the interrupt there is an immediate interrupt again because the interrupt condition hasn't been cleared.

                    Another possible explanation is that there is a bug in the handler for some device on IRQ19 and in some circumstances the interrupt condition is not cleared.

                    Perhaps this problem will go away if you try a pfSense 2.0 snapshot build; it has newer device drivers than pfSense 1.2.3 and your motherboard has a pretty new chipset.

                    If you can't go to pfSense 2.0 or it doesn't help you could try removing devices to see what makes a difference. Can you put one or more of your disks on atapci1? Can you replace (at least for test) the 4 port NIC?

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                    • jimpJ
                      jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                      last edited by

                      vmstat -i
                      

                      Will show what devices are on an IRQ (to a point..)

                      I didn't catch the sf1 in there earlier, but that is an Adaptec ethernet controller… I don't think I've ever seen one of those before, not sure what kind of quality it is (or the driver for that matter) so as wallabybob mentioned it could be that as well.

                      Moving the devices around a bit may still prove helpful, at least in narrowing down exactly which is to blame.

                      It might be worth relocating both of those drives to the primary sata controller instead of ports 4/5, they are obviously connected through a different internal path. sf1 may behave itself if it doesn't have to fight for the bus.

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                      • X
                        xenonsky
                        last edited by

                        I seems to have the exact same problem on my new 1.2.3 install on i3 540 and thru the Web GUI it showed a constant 20+% CPU.
                        When view thru "top -SH" command I get the following which showed "irq19: atapci1+" taking up 89% on CPU0

                        top -SH

                        last pid: 29754;  load averages:  0.00,  0.01,  0.00                                up 0+05:13:43  06:09:48
                        87 processes:  6 running, 66 sleeping, 15 waiting
                        CPU:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.1% system, 23.0% interrupt, 76.8% idle
                        Mem: 23M Active, 9280K Inact, 37M Wired, 280K Cache, 16M Buf, 2864M Free
                        Swap: 8192M Total, 8192M Free

                        PID USERNAME PRI NICE  SIZE    RES STATE  C  TIME  WCPU COMMAND
                          11 root    171 ki31    0K    8K CPU3  3 311:54 100.00% idle: cpu3
                          13 root    171 ki31    0K    8K CPU1  1 311:45 100.00% idle: cpu1
                          12 root    171 ki31    0K    8K RUN    2 308:51 100.00% idle: cpu2
                          38 root    -64    -    0K    8K CPU0  0 264:54 89.79% irq19: atapci1+
                          14 root    171 ki31    0K    8K RUN    0  47:24 11.87% idle: cpu0

                        The "atacontrol list" command output I got:

                        atacontrol list

                        ATA channel 0:
                            Master:      no device present
                            Slave:      no device present
                        ATA channel 1:
                            Master:      no device present
                            Slave:      no device present
                        ATA channel 2:
                            Master:      no device present
                            Slave:      no device present
                        ATA channel 3:
                            Master:  ad6 <st3500514ns sn11="">SATA revision 2.x
                            Slave:      no device present
                        ATA channel 4:
                            Master: acd0 <hl-dt-st dvdram="" gh24ns50="" xp02="">SATA revision 1.x
                            Slave:      no device present
                        ATA channel 5:
                            Master:      no device present
                            Slave:      no device present
                        ATA channel 6:
                            Master:      no device present
                            Slave:      no device present

                        and "vmstat -i" output I got:

                        vmstat -i

                        interrupt                          total      rate
                        irq16: ehci0                        159          0
                        irq19: atapci1+              1281400417      67541
                        irq23: ehci1                          55          0
                        cpu0: timer                    37942915      1999
                        irq256: re0                      364280        19
                        irq257: re1                      353607        18
                        cpu2: timer                    37933878      1999
                        cpu3: timer                    37933877      1999
                        cpu1: timer                    37933878      1999
                        Total                        1433863066      75577

                        So I'm wondering should I also try to relocate my SATA Hard disk to ATA channel 1 and DVD rom to ATA channel 2?

                        Any suggestion ?

                        Thanks.</hl-dt-st></st3500514ns>

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                        • W
                          wallabybob
                          last edited by

                          Please post the dmesg output so we can see more about your configuration, particularly what devices are using irq19.

                          If you have the option to do so, i would go into the BIOS, record the mode of all the disk controllers and change them all to legacy rather than raid or AHCI and see if that makes a difference. Or try a snapshot build of pfSense 2.0.

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                          • X
                            xenonsky
                            last edited by

                            This is very interesting after I poke around i can actually see that the CPU hog for IRQ19 is used by "Intel ATA Controller" as i can see it during the system bootup and it scroll by the screen.
                            then I check my system BIOS and my on-board SATA controller is already using IDE mode (non AHCI mode). So i went and disable just about everything I can find under the BIOS related to AHCI or disk mode and access, but nothing will make the CPU hog of IRQ19 drop. So finally I decided to change my SATA controller from IDE mode to AHCI mode, then after a reboot, my CPU usage is down to about 0% now. So this is interesting that it should be set to AHCI mode on this hardware combination.

                            This has been a good learning experience.

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