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Odd long-term cycle of memory usage

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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  • S
    solarfl4re
    last edited by Aug 26, 2013, 8:35 AM Aug 26, 2013, 8:29 AM

    Hi,
    I've had a pfSense installation running for the past ~5 months and am really enjoying it - I've never used such a capable firewall/router platform. It rocks!
    I've run into an odd issue though - the attached RRD graph shows it better. EDIT: Here is a link to a 3-month graph: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yem29abds2p3dmu/Aug_26_PFSENSE_3month_status_rrd_graph_img.png

    Is this something to worry about? I have Dansguardian, Squid, pfBlocker, (sometimes) darkstat, and OpenVPN running. 3GBs of RAM. Sometimes performance goes down without explanation; I'll admit that I'm still messing around and tinkering with things, but most of the time things work fine.

    Any help would be appreciated.

    Thanks,
    David
    Aug_26_PFSENSE_status_rrd_graph_img.png
    Aug_26_PFSENSE_status_rrd_graph_img.png_thumb

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    • K
      kejianshi
      last edited by Aug 26, 2013, 10:30 AM Aug 26, 2013, 10:26 AM

      Mine does the exact same thing.  Never actually maxes out but will climb up to 75% percent memory usage or so, then suddenly drop back down to 30% and just keep going.  No resets required or anything - no ill effects.  I keep a great big chunk of available ram allocated to squid cache.

      I always figured its a harmless effect of the way pfsense marks the memory.  Looks like Free and Inactive just trading places.

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      • B
        biggsy
        last edited by Aug 26, 2013, 10:50 AM

        It's alive!

        ![2013-08-26 20-43-01.png](/public/imported_attachments/1/2013-08-26 20-43-01.png)
        ![2013-08-26 20-43-01.png_thumb](/public/imported_attachments/1/2013-08-26 20-43-01.png_thumb)

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        • K
          kejianshi
          last edited by Aug 26, 2013, 10:53 AM

          Looking somewhat like a giant (insert noun of choice).

          I was thinking "squid" myself…

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          • D
            doktornotor Banned
            last edited by Aug 26, 2013, 11:05 AM

            @kejianshi:

            I was thinking "squid" myself…

            Meanwhile, back on topic, the usual answer to this would be "unused RAM == wasted money".

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            • K
              kejianshi
              last edited by Aug 26, 2013, 11:09 AM

              Yeah - I agree.  I'd love to be able to keep 75% or so of ram in use at all times, but when I allocate more than 50% or so to squid, pfsense stops playing nice with me.  Maybe it will be a different story on 2.1.

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              • S
                solarfl4re
                last edited by Aug 27, 2013, 2:35 AM

                Thanks for the replies, my mind is now at ease!

                Maybe I can give Squid some more memory - I was getting some really bad slowdowns where users couldn't browse the web at all, and so as part of my troubleshooting I took memory from Squid. Found out a few days ago that it was actually a Layer7 filter to catch torrent traffic - that was queuing into the ack queue (!!!). All fine… Torrent starts, web browsing grinds to a halt.
                Finally got traffic shaping working well enough... PfSense rocks  :)

                Thanks for the help,
                David

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                • K
                  kejianshi
                  last edited by Aug 27, 2013, 3:19 AM Aug 27, 2013, 3:16 AM

                  Yeah - Don't go too crazy with how much RAM you give squid cache.  The Docs recommend no more than 1/2 and I've tried it higher and it was sort of flakey.  I'm only running 4GB on my home router.  Perhaps if you have 8 or 12 GB or more, you can allocate alot more than half.  Not sure.

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