LCDProc 0.5.4-dev

Cino

I ran into that twice installing the pfSense LCDproc 5.5 Dev package. So I had to manually install the package file after installing the pfSense package because no LCDproc 5.5 core files just the pfSene php front end.

So first install pfSense LCDproc 5.5 Dev package and then next do the following.

Here is the link to the core files to install go to console and do this:

pkg_add -r http://files.pfsense.org/packages/8/All/lcdproc-0.5.5.tbz

-Joe Cowboy

what ver of pfsense are your running? i'm using 2.1-dev and have to manually install binaries because the box is trying to install pbi instead… gets annoying but i've gotten used to it..

joe_cowboy

I am running 2.1-dev – LCDProc 0.5.5-dev v0.8 I didn't realize he had just updated to v0.9..... So, I just did a reinstall and seemed to install correctly this time. Sorry for not posting the version last time and now have v0.9 installed. Unless, something was fixed in one of the last gitsyncs for 2.1-dev??? Thanks for all you hard work...

-Joe Cowboy

mdima

@mdima:

Steve,
looking my secondary machine, I have the feeling that the problems are related to the "scrolling" feature of the panel.

In fact I see sometime frozen screens where there is the scrolling… I will keep an eye on it and try to see if it is the problem...

Ciao,
Michele

Hello,
I am running LCDproc 0.5.5 with the package 0.9 and only the "traffic (wan)" screen since 2 days and everything is going fine…

Do anyone else has tried to avoid screens that do not scroll with a positive result?

Thanks,
Michele

tix

None of the screens I have enabled scroll (Uptime, States, Mbuf, & WAN with 5 second refresh) yet the display will still stop responding and the system cannot be connected to after 10 hours. The firewall continues to function normally as near as I can tell other than that - by that I mean, DHCP still works, existing hosts can continue to send/recv traffic and initate new traffic. Just the webif and SSH access no longer can connect due to the high load averages.

I have tried all combinations of sdecld.so and LCDd (v0.53, v0.55, debug-enabled LCDd) and having success ONLY on v0.53 of both the module and LCDd. Any mix of the various versions with that exception all send load to 100% at the 10 hour uptime mark. All testing was performed with the LCDdproc-dev-v0.9 package files changing only the sdeclcd.so and LCDd files - no other file was changed or modified.

I have over 48 hours of uptime without any visible problem running v0.53. This version will generate the following log entries every 10 hours but load stays less than 0.20 and the display works.


Jan 30 19:16:18 	LCDd: error: huh? Too much data received... quiet down!
Jan 30 19:16:18 	LCDd: Client on socket 11 disconnected
Jan 30 19:16:18 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 30 19:16:18 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 30 19:16:18 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 30 19:16:18 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 30 19:16:18 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 30 19:16:43 	php: lcdproc: Connection to LCDd process lost ()
Jan 30 19:16:45 	LCDd: Connect from host 127.0.0.1:5248 on socket 11

I'm not sure what was changed between 0.53 and 0.55 and would be willing to test 0.54 if someone can provide those files.

mdima

@tix:

None of the screens I have enabled scroll (Uptime, States, Mbuf, & WAN with 5 second refresh) yet the display will still stop responding and the system cannot be connected to after 10 hours.

Hi,
in my case the the states screen definitely scrolls… I have a 20x4 LCD display, max states: 500'000. When the states are more than 10'000 the screen scrolls.
Can you pls tell me what is your display size and what is your max states setting?

Thanks,
Michele

tix

@mdima:

Hi,
in my case the the states screen definitely scrolls… I have a 20x4 LCD display, max states: 500'000. When the states are more than 10'000 the screen scrolls.
Can you pls tell me what is your display size and what is your max states setting?

Thanks,
Michele

The display is the 2x20 standard included on the Firebox X series (X700). My states are only 50000, so it doesn't scroll.

My display finally stopped working on v0.53 but it took 50 hours or the 5th 10-hour interval. Interestingly, the LCDd just died but the client continued to function and the box is as responsive as normal. The log shows the 'normal for me on this version' entries except for the missing "reconnect' entry.


Jan 31 05:19:29 	LCDd: error: huh? Too much data received... quiet down!
Jan 31 05:19:29 	LCDd: Client on socket 11 disconnected
Jan 31 05:19:29 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 31 05:19:29 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 31 05:19:29 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 31 05:19:29 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 31 05:19:29 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 31 05:19:29 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 31 05:19:29 	LCDd: sock_send: socket write error
Jan 31 05:19:54 	php: lcdproc: Connection to LCDd process lost ()

stephenw10

@mdima:

Do anyone else has tried to avoid screens that do not scroll with a positive result?

Yes. Running interface traffic with WAN selected as the only screen has eliminated the 100% CPU problem (after 15hours testing at 1sec refresh).

I am also running the LCDd the fmertz compiled with debugging enabled but it gives me only a tiny amount of extra information. This is with logging set to level 5. I think I've not under stood how that's supposed to work. Time to re-read the developer guide!

I also tried running LCDd with different nice levels in order to be able access the box during the problem event but it made no difference. It seems like you should be able to set it to Nice 20 and it will be very low priority but that doesn't happen.
In fact if you look at the output of top it runs at 'r30' which I cannot find any reference to anywhere. :-\


last pid: 27372;  load averages:  0.02,  0.08,  0.06                                                 up 0+23:30:46  12:43:59
48 processes:  1 running, 47 sleeping
CPU:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.4% system,  0.4% interrupt, 99.3% idle
Mem: 55M Active, 16M Inact, 55M Wired, 1060K Cache, 49M Buf, 359M Free
Swap:

  PID USERNAME  THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU COMMAND
44832 root        1  76   20  3656K  1396K wait     1:01  0.00% sh
 4015 root        1  45    0 47452K 17464K nanslp   0:57  0.00% php
 2024 nobody      1  74  r30  3368K  1500K nanslp   0:39  0.00% LCDd

Steve

fmertz

@stephenw10:

Yes. Running interface traffic with WAN selected as the only screen has eliminated the 100% CPU problem (after 15hours testing at 1sec refresh).

I also tried running LCDd with different nice levels

Maybe another test: run the normal lcdproc client provided by the project. FWIW, I run lcdproc on 2 hosts (a NAS and the router itself), and LCDd on the router itself, and it seems to run just fine for weeks. lcdproc has a bunch of screens with scrolling, vbars, hbars, icons, big nums… This is Linux, but the same code. This could help isolate more info about the problem.

If you need it: https://github.com/downloads/fmertz/sdeclcd/lcdproc

For nice, the driver code sets the process priority to "realtime round robin" as part of the initialization for the portable "wait" routines. Maybe this is the "r" you are seeing. The call to set the priority was removed in the driver I posted earlier.

fmertz

Folks,

I would like to kick off the effort to bring the LED support into the driver again. We have some support already, but only for the box I own (the X-Core-e). I was hoping folks with the other models could run a command to help me identify the EXACT ICH we need to code for. Best I can figure, this command is already in pfSense and should be run as root:

pciconf -r pci0:31:0 0:256

This command reads the PCI configuration area (256 bytes) for the Low Pin count (LPC) device. The LPC device does GPIO, and can control the LEDs. Based on the exact device id, I can look up the spec, and find out the offset for GPIO base register, etc.

I would like the output of the command, for the X-Core and X-Peak models. The key is the first 8 digits, the last 4 being 8086, Intel's vendor ID. Thanks.

stephenw10

X-Peak:


[2.0.1-RELEASE][root@pfsense.fire.box]/root(7): pciconf -r pci0:31:0 0:256
25a18086 0280000f 06010002 00800000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000401 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000481 00000010
050a0c0b 000000d0 09808080 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
000054d5 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000220 00000000 0000000d 00000300
00000000 00000000 05415555 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00002186 00000f02 00000004 00000000
c0000000 34040000 00112233 45670291
00e40000 00000000 00020f66 00010000
ffffffff

I'll have to try your driver without priority setting and see what happens.

Steve

Edit: You were correct. The driver with priority removed can be set to nice 20. I am testing now with several scrolling screens to see if I can still access the box.

mdima

Hello everybody,
I am making some tests to improve the stability of the package from the "client side". Until now from what I read all the tries have been made on the binary package and the driver, I think that maybe also a little help from the client can solve some problems.

I am testing this changes on my boxes and I find no problems, so I would like to share this changes with you.

The changes are:

Added a 20ms delay between each command sent from the client to LCDproc.
Better managed errors. Now the client resets the error counter every successful communication session with LCDproc (before was a global counter). The error counter is managed inside the client (lcdproc_client.php).
Because of the above change, now the "client script" (lcdclient.sh) do not cycle anymore.

I hope at least some of the problems will be solved… I wait for your feedback. The new version is XXX.0.9.1.

Thanks,
Michele

mdima

… and we are with 0.9.2.

I didn't realize that there were some clients pending, that with the new error counter management could work behind. So now all the lcdproc_client.php processes are killed during the package resync.

Sorry for the people that was already upgrading do 0.9.1...

stephenw10

Looks good. :)

Now the error counter is in the php script (much better) why bother having lcdclient.sh at all?
Just call the php client from the rc file directly.

Also I have been running fmertz's driver he removed real time priority from with Nice level 20. Doing this allows the box to remain responsive even when some error event occours. Since the LCD is really of no importance compared to the firewall functions it seems better to run it at minimum priority. E.g.


$start .= "\t/usr/bin/nice -20 /usr/local/sbin/LCDd -c ". LCDPROC_CONFIG ."\n";
$start .= "\t/usr/bin/nice -20 ". LCDPROC_CLIENT ." &\n";

Steve

mdima

@stephenw10:

Looks good. :)

Thanks!

@stephenw10:

Now the error counter is in the php script (much better) why bother having lcdclient.sh at all?
Just call the php client from the rc file directly.

makes sense…

@stephenw10:

Also I have been running fmertz's driver he removed real time priority from with Nice level 20. Doing this allows the box to remain responsive even when some error event occours. Since the LCD is really of no importance compared to the firewall functions it seems better to run it at minimum priority. E.g.
$start .= "\t/usr/bin/nice -20 /usr/local/sbin/LCDd -c ". LCDPROC_CONFIG ."\n";
$start .= "\t/usr/bin/nice -20 ". LCDPROC_CLIENT ." &\n";

also this makes sense. Just we have to consider if this influences negatively the client or LCDd to refresh the data or communicate with the panel, but it's just a matter of tuning…

fmertz

Folks, the SDEC driver for Fireboxes is now officially part of the upstream lcdproc project! I received confirmation this morning that my code submission was committed. I guess it should come to pfSense as part of the package when the project leaders decide the current development branch is stable enough for release.

Now, on to support for the LEDs…

mdima

That's great! So the next version of LCDproc will have the SDEC driver… fmerz, consider that the compiling option in pfSense is "WITH_USB=true" only, I don't know if with this option the SDEC driver will be compiled...

BTW, how's going with the new package version? I found out it's more stable, but anyway still give some problems... what do you think?

Thanks,
Michele

stephenw10

Excellent work! ;D

Steve

fmertz

@stephenw10:

X-Peak:


[2.0.1-RELEASE][root@pfsense.fire.box]/root(7): pciconf -r pci0:31:0 0:256
25a18086

Device ID 25a1 is a 6300ESB, data sheet: http://ark.intel.com/products/27663/Intel-6300ESB-IO-Controller

For the X-Peak, the LEDs are on GPIO pins 40 and 41. This is part of the second set of pins, so there no blink support in hardware. We already knew this…

Anyone with an X-Core?

tix

@fmertz:

I would like the output of the command, for the X-Core and X-Peak models. The key is the first 8 digits, the last 4 being 8086, Intel's vendor ID. Thanks.

X-Core (x700)


/root(1): pciconf -r pci0:31:0 0:256
24408086 0280000f 06010005 00800000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00004001 00000010 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00004081 00000010
09060b0c 000000d0 0a058003 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00005475 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000200 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00004004 00000000 00000000
00002002 00001f02 00000004 00000000
c0000010 14050000 00112233 45670291
017c000f 00000000 00000f47 00000200
ffffffff

I'm using the WGXepc script and it works flawlessly!

fmertz

@tix:

X-Core (x700)


/root(1): pciconf -r pci0:31:0 0:256
24408086

2440 is an 82801BA, Intel ICH2, datasheet here: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/datasheet/82801ba-i-o-controller-hub-2-82801bam-i-o-controller-hub-2-mobile-datasheet.pdf

Somehow the existing WGXepc code does not seem to line up with the spec…