Low performance ALIX.2D13

btoorenburg

We have bought two pfSense ready systems in the Vario-Store based on the Alix.2D13 board with three LAN's (http://shop.varia-store.com/product_info.php?info=p886_pfSense-ready-system-with-ALIX-2D13-and-accessories.html).
This platform is very energy savy (5 watt)
We have also a pfSense firewall running on a 5 year old Shuttle machine. The last one is running perfectly with a very good performance, but this machine is not so energy savy. We have compared both configurations but we can't find any differences.
Does anyone have any suggestions where to look or how to diagnose the problem of the performace on the Alix machine?

Thanks in advance,

Bas
1.2.3-RELEASE
built on Mon Dec 7 23:21:58 EST 2009
Platform nanobsd
Uptime
State table size
Show states
MBUF Usage 387 /645
CPU usage
Memory usage
Disk usage

:-\

GruensFroeschli

define "low performance"
and how do you test this?

abeowitz

I set UDMA in BIOS… Push on the tiny button hole in the front of the box while turning on. You'll see this in your serial/modem software:

(You may have to change your terminal baud. The BIOS defaults faster than BSD's loader, 9600. Then change the BIOS baud to 9600 to match.)

PC Engines ALIX.2 v0.99h
640 KB Base Memory
261120 KB Extended Memory
Waiting for HDD ...

01F0 Master 044A CF Card                                 
Phys C/H/S 15490/16/63 Log C/H/S 971/255/63 LBA
01F0 Slave  045A HITACHI_DK23EA-40                       
Phys C/H/S 16383/16/63 Log C/H/S 4864/255/63 LBA

BIOS setup:

*9* 9600 baud (2) 19200 baud (3) 38400 baud (5) 57600 baud (1) 115200 baud
*C* CHS mode (L) LBA mode *W* HDD wait *V* HDD slave *U* UDMA enable
(M) MFGPT workaround
(P) late PCI init
*R* Serial console enable 
(E) PXE boot enable 
(X) Xmodem upload 
(Q) Quit

That seems to have helped, but without measuring disk IO, it's anecdotal. Any way to measure it? (Like Linux's hdparm?)

Unfortunately, I can't get the OS to see my 2nd hard disk. The BIOS recognizes it:

1  pfSense
2  pfSense
5  Drive 1

F6 PXE
Boot:  2 
/boot.config: -h
Consoles: serial port  
BIOS drive C: is disk0
BIOS drive D: is disk1

isab0: <pci-isa bridge="">port 0x6000-0x6007,0x6100-0x61ff,0x6200-0x623f,0x9d00-0x9d7f,0x9c00-0x9c3f at device 15.0 on pci0
isa0: <isa bus="">on isab0
atapci0: <amd cs5536="" udma100="" controller="">port 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0xff00-0xff0f at device 15.2 on pci0
ata0: <ata 0="" channel="">on atapci0
ata0: [ITHREAD]
ata1: <ata 1="" channel="">on atapci0
ata1: [ITHREAD]

...
ad0: 7623MB <cf card="" ver6.50="">at ata0-master [b]PIO4[/b]</cf></ata></ata></amd></isa></pci-isa>

Not sure if CF Card can do UDMA?

Any suggestions?

stephenw10

Your CF card may well not support UDMA but it doesn't matter since, last time I checked, FreeBSD doesn't support dma on compact flash cards. You'll almost certainly find the following lines in /boot/loader.conf


hw.ata.atapi_dma="0"
hw.ata.ata_dma="0"

Either way it would only help with the boot time anyway. The nanobsd install runs mostly from ram.

You haven't said what it is that's low about the performance.

Steve

Edit: Looking into this again I can't find my previous references. It could be that was only true for FreeBSD 7.X. In fact I found several posts indicating that dma works on some hardware under FreeBSD 8.1 (which pfSense 2.0 is based on).
You could try commenting out those lines but last time I tried that my systrm wouldn't boot.

Edit: Here is the bug report: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=130171
This was for FreeBSD 7.1 though.

abeowitz

Yeah, I just rebooted it with varying BIOS settings, still PIO4 and no ad1…

Thanks for the info. :)

GruensFroeschli

So you're worried about the performance of the CF disk?
You do know that once it's booted it doesn't access the CF anymore? (except for config changes)
Everything runs out of RAM.

abeowitz

@GruensFroeschli:

So you're worried about the performance of the CF disk?
You do know that once it's booted it doesn't access the CF anymore? (except for config changes)
Everything runs out of RAM.

Not sure about the concerns of the original poster. I found this post while looking for a way to add on an IDE disk on my ALIX board. (Which has sufficient performance at this time. However, I may look into a beefier box to allow me to do snort and squid. Using squid on this box slows things way down… --not a limitation or complaint with regards to pfSense)