Problems on a watchguard x550e

[drdyno]

hey guys

I did an install on a x550e a while back and had some issues with it, so I scrapped the project due to time. I am now trying to look back into the issues I was having to resolve them and actually get this working and replace my dell poweredge server I have running pfsense currently.

On to the issues.

I was running 2.1-RC1 on it originally and having issues with the CPU usage at 100%

I have just installed 2.1.3 and still having the same issue as before.
here is the list of modifications I have done to the unit.

• 1gb of ddr2 667 ram
• 4gb cf card
• SL7SM mobile cpu

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff

[stephenw10]

Ok, so you've put a 533MHz FSB CPU in there. Do you have both sets of DIP switches set correctly?

Are you running powerd?

If you run 'top -aSH' at the console what is using all your CPU?

Steve

[drdyno]

Steve,

Thank you for responding here are some screenshots..


[drdyno]

Steve,

also I checked both sets of dip switches both sets are set for dolthan.

I have not installed ANY packages in this setup as I can't even get it to load.

Jeff

[stephenw10]

If you run it at the console you get a break down of CPU usage in a line at the top which is useful. However here it's obvious 'check reload status' is using all your cpu cycles. That is usually a symptom of something else.

Powerd is not a package it's enabled just with a check box.

Anything in the system logs?

Steve

[drdyno]

it looks like it keeps refreshing the dhcpv6 address on the wan interface

I disabled ipv6 on the wan and the cpu usage went to 0%

[stephenw10]

Ah, well caught. What is it connected to upstream?
pfSense can have problems if it is offered an incomplete or broken IPv6 interface. At the moment it will default to IPv6 if it's available so if it's broken you end up with nothing. See:
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Controlling_IPv6_or_IPv4_Preference

Steve

[drdyno]

Steve,

currently I have the watchguard on my network behind another watchguard..

my dell poweredge 10.13.x.x network

to the wan of the firebox 192.168.1.x network.

I have done this just to setup and configure the watchguard system to replace my poweredge server

I have ipv6 running on my poweredge

[stephenw10]

So all pfSense boxes then? I wonder if it's some hardware offloading option that doesn't work with v6. Pure guess.  ::)

Steve

[drdyno]

However I am now getting

ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA timed out LBA=512

time outs and failure on boot

[stephenw10]

Exactly what image did you flash to the CF card? DMA should be disabled on the standard Nano images.

Steve

[drdyno]

nanobsd-4g image

i was working on getting other this running and had just added entries into

/boot/loader.conf.local

and rebooted then I get these errors

[stephenw10]

What entries?

Steve

[drdyno]

hw.msk.msi_disable=1
hint.p4tcc.0.disabled=1
hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled=1
if_sk_load="yes"
if_msk_load="yes"

[stephenw10]

Hmm, Ok. Those all look like things you probably want to have.
Look in /boot/loader.conf, you should see some entries disabling DMA:

hw.ata.atapi_dma="0"
hw.ata.ata_dma="0"
hw.ata.wc="0"

The CF card slot on the X-e box doesn't have the pins that support DMA connected so if it tries to use it it fails.

Steve

[drdyno]

ok so dumb question.

how do i get to the /boot/loader.conf.local file if it won't boot?

[drdyno]

nm i may have it figured out

[chpalmer]

@drdyno:

However I am now getting

ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA timed out LBA=512

time outs and failure on boot

Scandisk brand card?

[stephenw10]

Interesting question.
Can you boot from the alternate slice at the boot loader?
I'm suddenly unsure of what appears at boot via the serial console.
If you can escape at the boot load prompt you can issue a:

set hw.ata.ata_dma="0"
boot

See: https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#NanoBSD_on_Newer_Hardware

If you've made a whole series of changes and revisions it might be time to re-image the card anyway.

I don't think it's that Scandisk error since that usually displays 'NID not found'.
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/DMA_and_LBA_Errors#Non-Fatal_Errors
I could be wrong though.

Steve

[drdyno]

no its a duracell brand card.. only thing i could find from fry's at the time.

I over wrote my loader.conf instead of writing it to loader.conf.local
DOH!

fixed now though..

trying to figure out now if it is the hardware slowing it all down

I get 54/11 from my poweredge

and get 25/10 out of the firebox