Faster pfSense 2.1 NanoBSD image upgrade explained!

zenny

If a NanoBSD upgrade takes that long, you must have one really, really, crappy CF or CF adapter/socket/controller.

It only takes a few minutes on my ALIX including the download time with a normal GUI-initiated upgrade.

Now reinstalling packages post-upgrade, that does take some time if you have a lot installed.

Do you notice the same slowness if you download straight to the CF? (/etc/rc.conf_mount_rw; fetch -o /root/ …) and then run the upgrade from that file?

yes, the same slowness even when I directly download the image to the CF card or USB stick (Kingston which supports upto 237mb/s in normal situations).

zenny

@MaxPF:

No such problem on my Alix box. The upgrade process doesn't take more than 5 minutes.

You are lucky then! ;-)

jimp

What kind of system are you running NanoBSD on?

If it's not an ALIX but something else with some more power to it, keep this in mind:
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#NanoBSD_on_Newer_Hardware

zenny

@jimp:

What kind of system are you running NanoBSD on?

If it's not an ALIX but something else with some more power to it, keep this in mind:
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#NanoBSD_on_Newer_Hardware

I am running on a 64-bit dual-core P4 3.2Mhz machine with 4GB RAM, fyi.

phil.davis

Just for the record, my Alix systems typically download at the (terribly slow) line speeds we have in remote places (some 192kbps = about 20KB/second = 50 sec/MB = roughly 1 hour for the download) then it takes about 5 minutes to do the writing of the ~80MB to the CF card partition, <2 minutes offline during reboot, then however much time to dribble down the package reinstall (it pays to not use big packages in the remote places!) In places with faster internet links, it happily downloads at 1-4 Mbps without apparent delays waiting for CF card writes.
My slowness is all due to the available internet speed - there is only 5 minutes in the process when it is writing as fast as possible to the CF card partition.

jimp

@zenny:

@jimp:

What kind of system are you running NanoBSD on?

If it's not an ALIX but something else with some more power to it, keep this in mind:
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#NanoBSD_on_Newer_Hardware

I am running on a 64-bit dual-core P4 3.2Mhz machine with 4GB RAM, fyi.

Then most likely you're seeing side effects of running without ACPI, DMA, and write caching on that hardware.

zenny

@phil.davis:

Just for the record, my Alix systems typically download at the (terribly slow) line speeds we have in remote places (some 192kbps = about 20KB/second = 50 sec/MB = roughly 1 hour for the download) then it takes about 5 minutes to do the writing of the ~80MB to the CF card partition, <2 minutes offline during reboot, then however much time to dribble down the package reinstall (it pays to not use big packages in the remote places!) In places with faster internet links, it happily downloads at 1-4 Mbps without apparent delays waiting for CF card writes.
My slowness is all due to the available internet speed - there is only 5 minutes in the process when it is writing as fast as possible to the CF card partition.

Yes, I have 26Mbps connection. So connection is not the bottleneck.

Usually it takes some 1 to 2 hours to download, and obviously it takes only a few mintues to upgrade pfSense base in one slice, but it takes another hour to upgrade the addon packages.

Then most likely you're seeing side effects of running without ACPI, DMA, and write caching on that hardware.

However, like jimp stated that it may be related with ACPI (but I have ACPI enabled), DMA or most importantly writecache, I assume.

Thanks for your inputs.

jimp

Unless you manually enabled ACPI and friends in loader.conf.local, then you don't have them (regardless of the BIOS settings), because on NanoBSD we disable them by default. (as mentioned on my link)

razzfazz

Is this different for NanoBSD vs. NanoBSD+VGA?

[2.1-RC0][root@router....]/root(1): uname -a
FreeBSD router.... 8.3-RELEASE-p8 FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p8 #0: Mon Jul 15 16:58:10 EDT 2013     root@snapshots-8_3-amd64.builders.pfsense.org:/usr/obj.pfSense/usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_wrap_vga.8.amd64  amd64
[2.1-RC0][root@router....]/root(2): cat /boot/loader.conf.local
hw.ata.ata_dma_check_80pin="0"
[2.1-RC0][root@router....]/root(3): sysctl hw.ata
hw.ata.setmax: 0
hw.ata.wc: 1
hw.ata.atapi_dma: 1
hw.ata.ata_dma_check_80pin: 0
hw.ata.ata_dma: 1

jimp

Yes, NanoBSD+VGA has those enabled already.