Nanobsd and compact flash
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For pfsense nanobsd. What is the typical writing speed for a compact flash?
Running pfsense 2.1 amd64 nanobsd on a CF card (Kingston elite pro 133x), writing to the CF card is slow (below 1 MBps).
- iostat output
ad0
KB/t tps MB/s
4.00 222 0.87
4.00 144 0.56
4.00 158 0.62
4.00 124 0.48
4.00 218 0.85
With the same hardware, but running pfsense 2.1 full install from a harddisk. Writing to the same CF card, slightly better. (the CF card on Win 7 with usb reader, FAT32, can get 15MBps)
- iostat output
ad0
KB/t tps MB/s
120.71 17 2.00
123.87 30 3.63
124.46 35 4.25
124.12 32 3.87
115.60 20 2.26
Seems like running nanobsd, it is limited to 4KB/t (happen also on other model of boards).
Any insight on what maybe causing the slow writing speed?
- iostat output
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The measurements are meaningless unless the system was trying to perform the same task during each sample. NanoBSD is explicitly designed to not write very much to disk so I'd expect the numbers to be lower than a full install.
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In the standard nanobsd images DMA is disabled so it doesn't matter how fast the card claims to be it will only be running at PIO speed. It is disabled because in many CF-IDE adapters the required connections for running DMA are missing and that causes it to fail to boot. If your adapter has those connections you can try re-enabling DMA by editing /boot/loader.conf appropriately.
Nice explanation here: http://www.fccps.cz/download/adv/frr/cf.html
Steve
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The measurements are meaningless unless the system was trying to perform the same task during each sample. NanoBSD is explicitly designed to not write very much to disk so I'd expect the numbers to be lower than a full install.
When comparing the nanobsd & full install pfsense. I download file from ftp server on the LAN, it is a 100Mbps connection (max out at around 11MB/s).
In the standard nanobsd images DMA is disabled so it doesn't matter how fast the card claims to be it will only be running at PIO speed. It is disabled because in many CF-IDE adapters the required connections for running DMA are missing and that causes it to fail to boot. If your adapter has those connections you can try re-enabling DMA by editing /boot/loader.conf appropriately.
Nice explanation here: http://www.fccps.cz/download/adv/frr/cf.html
Steve
Seem like DMA is already enabled. sysctl show
hw.ata.wc: 1
hw.ata.atapi_dma: 1
hw.ata.ata_dma_check_80pin: 1
hw.ata.ata_dma: 1dmesg show
ad0: 7647MB <elite 20120410="" pro="" cf="" card="" 8gb="">at ata0-master UDMA66
ad4: 476940MB <st500dm002 1bd142="" kc45="">at ata2-master UDMA100 SATA 3Gb/sTurn off DMA just to experiment,
sysctl:
hw.ata.wc: 0
hw.ata.atapi_dma: 0
hw.ata.ata_dma: 0dmesg:
ad0: 7647MB <elite 20120410="" pro="" cf="" card="" 8gb="">at ata0-master PIO4
ad4: 476940MB <st500dm002 1bd142="" kc45="">at ata2-master PIO4 SATA 3Gb/sNot much difference writing to CF card
ad0
KB/t tps MB/s
4.00 166 0.65
4.00 166 0.65
4.00 163 0.64
4.00 122 0.48
4.00 168 0.66Significant when writing to a harddisk (this is on a nanobsd system)
ad4 (DMA on) ad4 (DMA off)
KB/t tps MB/s KB/t tps MB/s
128.00 90 11.26 128.00 39 4.83
128.00 90 11.24 128.00 39 4.83
126.77 90 11.16 128.00 38 4.74
128.00 90 11.26 128.00 39 4.84
128.00 89 11.14 128.00 39 4.83Any setting to improve the CF card performance?
Thanks.</st500dm002></elite></st500dm002></elite>
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Interesting. Is that the standard nano image or nano-vga?
Steve
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Ah. Nano-VGA was originally produced for a specific box that wouldn't boot at all if DMA was disabled.
No idea why it's so slow then. My own nano installs are also dog slow but I always assumed it was because DMA was disabled or the cards were just slow.
Steve
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In the standard nanobsd images DMA is disabled so it doesn't matter how fast the card claims to be it will only be running at PIO speed. It is disabled because in many CF-IDE adapters the required connections for running DMA are missing and that causes it to fail to boot. If your adapter has those connections you can try re-enabling DMA by editing /boot/loader.conf appropriately.
Nice explanation here: http://www.fccps.cz/download/adv/frr/cf.html
Steve
Hi Steve,
You may recall my post HERE about adding a hard disk to my X750e to provide storage for the proxy cache, and the rather poor disk IO rates of ~4.5MBytes/sec. Reading this post I saw the same performance being quoted for PIO access to disk.
So, you can guess what's coming…
Do you know if the Watchguard boxes will support IDE DMA to/from CF, and if so, how do you turn it on? That should improve boot time.
How can I turn on DMA for the hard disk, (a) together with CF DMA support if it's supported, or (b) independently if the CF won't support DMA?
By all means post the response in the thread referenced above so you can rightfully claim the credit for any speed increase there. :)
Thanks,
Steve
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An update for future reference.
Slow write speed was due to nanobsd mount filesystem in synchronous mode. Can achieve 4MBps once mounted as asynchronous (remove the sync option from mount commands).
Looks like for now it is a choice between resilient filesystem or fast filesystem.
