Network card problem

rvandam

After months without any problem our router stops working twice a day. When I check the logs the only interesting addition is in the dhcpd log. I see lots of messages like:

Jul 9 16:07:34 pfsense dhcpd: send_packet: No buffer space available
Jul 9 16:07:34 pfsense dhcpd: dhcp.c:3293: Failed to send 300 byte long packet over nfe0 interface.

I watch the mbuf size now for days very closely, and the mbuf usage is always around the 2 - 3%

Here is the netstat -mm output:


4478/772/5250 mbufs in use (current/cache/total)
4477/705/5182/262144 mbuf clusters in use (current/cache/total/max)
4476/388 mbuf+clusters out of packet secondary zone in use (current/cache)
0/27/27/131072 4k (page size) jumbo clusters in use (current/cache/total/max)
0/0/0/65536 9k jumbo clusters in use (current/cache/total/max)
0/0/0/32768 16k jumbo clusters in use (current/cache/total/max)
10073K/1711K/11784K bytes allocated to network (current/cache/total)
0/0/0 requests for mbufs denied (mbufs/clusters/mbuf+clusters)
0/0/0 requests for jumbo clusters denied (4k/9k/16k)
0/0/0 sfbufs in use (current/peak/max)
0 requests for sfbufs denied
0 requests for sfbufs delayed
0 requests for I/O initiated by sendfile
0 calls to protocol drain routines

For a few days I increased the mbuf size by these additions to loader.conf.loca (didn't help)l:

kern.cam.boot_delay=10000
kern.ipc.nmbclusters="262144"
kern.ipc.nmbjumbop="262144"
hw.igb.num_queues=1
hw.nfe.fc_setting=0
hw.igb.fc_setting=0

The strange thing is that the system also has a 4port igb networkcard, and I find no buffer related messages about this card. The nfe card is on the lan side, and with the igb card I connect to 4 adsl connections.

Any hints about this strange issue?

MindfulCoyote

Might be that you've run into this bug? https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/3614 Does your nfe0 interface go inactive for periods of time?

Edit: Also, since this just happened out of the blue, perhaps try replacing the nfe0? Maybe the hardware is failing?

rvandam

Thanks for the reply!

The router stops working when there is much traffic, so I don't think this bug applies to my case. I will replace the networkcard and see what happns.

rvandam

With the new network card the router did run for 24 hours without problems now, so thats very promising :)

MindfulCoyote

@rvandam:

With the new network card the router did run for 24 hours without problems now, so thats very promising :)

That sounds promising. I have been getting used to my computers running well, I sometimes forget that hardware failures can still happen out of the blue.

charliem

Sometimes hardware that is in process of failing can be made worse by high traffic, stressing the card and making it hotter. It seemed to be driver related, but really the hardware was failing. That's gotten me once or twice.

stephenw10

I have seen similar errors caused by something as simple as a card that had become unseated in it's slot. Also bad cable or bad switch, anything that might stop the NIC actually sending packets whilst still being connected enough to show up.

Steve