Adding a cpu to pfsense 1.2.3

[imeitoiu]

Hello,

I'm new to freebsd  & pfsense and i have the following issue.

One pfsense vmware box was powered off to add a second CPU, and some memory. After poweron i didn't see the second cpu and
sysctl -a | grep hw.ncpu returns hw.ncpu: 1.

I've checked to se if the box was installed with the SMP option (I inherited this box and don't know if it was isntalled with the SMP option)

uname -a

FreeBSD gw1 7.2-RELEASE-p5 FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE-p5 #0: Sun Dec  6 23:20:31 EST 2009  ullrich@FreeBSD_7.2_pfSense_1.2.3_snaps.pfsense.org:/usr/obj.pfSense/usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_SMP.7  i386

kldstat returned that smb module wasn't loaded so i loaded it manualy with kldload

kldstat

Id Refs Address    Size    Name
1  12 0xc0400000 ac3240  kernel
2    1 0xc0ec4000 6a45c    acpi.ko
3    1 0xc596e000 5000    glxsb.ko
4    1 0xc6032000 4000    vmmemctl.ko
5    1 0xc6036000 5000    vmxnet.ko
6    1 0xc6043000 5000    vmblock.ko
7    1 0xc6049000 b000    vmhgfs.ko
8    1 0xc60ed000 3000    smb.ko
9    1 0xc60f0000 2000    smbus.ko

still no second cpu in top -P or sysctl -a | grep hw.ncpu

Do you have any suggestions or further reading links.

Thank you

[wallabybob]

@imeitoiu:

kldstat returned that smb module wasn't loaded so i loaded it manualy with kldload

smb module is for support of the System Message Bus, a bus commonly used to interact with environment sensors; nothing to do with support for multiple CPUs.

@imeitoiu:

Do you have any suggestions or further reading links.

I don't know about vmware but, if I recall correctly, Virtual Box allows configuration of the number of CPUS visible in a Virtual Machine.

[imeitoiu]

Thank you for this, it somehow sliped my mind
I was seeing smb and reading smp. But there is no smp module.

the question stands if

uname -a

FreeBSD gw1 7.2-RELEASE-p5 FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE-p5 #0: Sun Dec  6 23:20:31 EST 2009  ullrich@FreeBSD_7.2_pfSense_1.2.3_snaps.pfsense.org:/usr/obj.pfSense/usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_SMP.7  i386

means that it was installed with SMP support and if yes can i activate it

The virtual machine has 2 processors from vmware and it is configured correctly from this point of view.

[jimp]

If you have the SMP kernel, additional CPUs would be detected and used automatically.

If you run this command it will show how many CPUs are in use (for example…)

$ sysctl -n kern.smp.cpus
2

[wallabybob]

@imeitoiu:

The virtual machine has 2 processors from vmware and it is configured correctly from this point of view.

The VM BIOS also has to tell FreeBSD how many CPUs are available. This can be done by MPTABLE or ACPI. (There might be a vmware configuration item for either or both of these.) If using ACPI then FreeBSD has to take notice of ACPI (there is a FreeBSD boot option to ignore ACPI).

http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Does_pfSense_support_SMP_%28multi-processor_and/or_core%29_systems%3F says the SMP kernel needs to be chosen at installation time. The SMP in the string returned by the uname -a commands suggests
you are running the SMP kernel but I am not certain.