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Bug #2401

closed

Mounting read-only after mounting read-write can be very slow on NanoBSD

Added by Jim Pingle over 12 years ago. Updated about 12 years ago.

Status:
Resolved
Priority:
High
Assignee:
-
Category:
Operating System
Target version:
2.1
Start date:
04/27/2012
Due date:
% Done:

100%

Estimated time:
Plus Target Version:
Release Notes:
Affected Version:
2.1
Affected Architecture:

Description

Mounting read-only after mounting read-write can be very slow on recent NanoBSD images on 2.1, based on FreeBSD 8.3

Does not seem to affect all CF cards, but most, especially slower ones.

[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][]/root(1): time /etc/rc.conf_mount_rw
0.457u 0.077s 0:01.04 50.0% 3184+477k 0+27io 0pf+0w
[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][]/root(2): time /etc/rc.conf_mount_ro
0.441u 0.112s 0:37.01 1.4% 3101+450k 0+597io 0pf+0w

[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][]/root(4): time mount -o rw /
0.005u 0.000s 0:00.00 0.0% 0+0k 0+3io 0pf+0w
[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][]/root(5): time mount -o ro /
0.000u 0.021s 0:35.56 0.0% 160+704k 0+542io 0pf+0w

[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][]/root(2): time /sbin/mount -u -w -o sync,noatime /
0.000u 0.006s 0:00.01 0.0% 0+0k 0+5io 0pf+0w
[2.1-DEVELOPMENT][]/root(3): time /sbin/mount -u -r -f -o sync,noatime /
0.000u 0.018s 0:28.37 0.0% 64+2680k 0+407io 0pf+0w

Normally the read-only mount step should only take a few seconds, 5 or so.

As a consequence, many operations on the firewall take a very long time to work as it will pause for >30 seconds every time something re-mounts ro during the process. Reboot takes a very long time as well.

There is a lot more data in this forum thread:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,48256.msg257717.html#msg257717

A few more data points:
  • Enabling TRIM on the slice - no effect, still slow
  • Enabling softupdates on the slice - no effect, still slow
  • Running sync;sync;sync; before mounting ro - no effect, still slow
  • The mount process sticks in biowr state, which is disk i/o
  • While mount is stuck, the system is somewhat unresponsive - can't run a process or connect with ssh, but does appear to continue routing.
  • If you mount ro twice in a row, the second is fast, so it's only a problem when transitioning from read-write to read-only.

Truss on the slow mount process:
http://pastiebin.com/?page=p&id=4f9ace216b5cb

top -SH while mount is happening:
http://pastiebin.com/?page=p&id=4f9ae2a9bc080

systat -iostat :
http://pastiebin.com/?page=p&id=4f9ae3017b4ef

ststat -vmstat during and after :
http://pastiebin.com/?page=p&id=4f9ae3f4c746a

Because this is NanoBSD, DMA is already disabled and so is write caching.

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 #1

Updated by Jim Pingle over 12 years ago

  • Description updated (diff)
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 #2

Updated by Marcus Brown over 12 years ago

Hi,
I've been having this problem with NanoBSD too. However, I just noticed that when I updated Safari to v6.0 the problem disappeared. Previously I was using Chrome, and the problem was apparent. I never did any timing tests on the command line, but I was noticing very long >30 seconds to save any new setting using the web GUI.

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 #3

Updated by Ermal Luçi over 12 years ago

  • Status changed from New to Feedback

This should have gonne away with the fixes that went in for reference counting fixes.

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 #4

Updated by Jim Pingle over 12 years ago

  • Status changed from Feedback to New

It may be improved a little but it's still slow even just running mount, no refcounts involved.
Still only affects certain CF cards. One I have is fast, another is extremely slow.

: time /sbin/mount -u -w -o sync,noatime /
0.006u 0.000s 0:00.01 0.0% 0+0k 0+5io 0pf+0w
: time /sbin/mount -u -r -f -o sync,noatime /
0.000u 0.018s 0:45.66 0.0% 0+0k 0+398io 0pf+0w

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 #5

Updated by Bipin Chandra about 12 years ago

i have a 2GB SLC based CF card and i installed the 1GB nanobsd, when using without much changes its fast but as soon as u start configuring more stuff and i also installed freeradius2 and after that it went dead slow, more than 45seconds for each edit, i also noticed the more the disk space is used, the more slower it gets

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 #6

Updated by David Jarosch about 12 years ago

I've updated to 2.1-BETA0 (i386) built on Thu Oct 11 yesterday and having the sames issues like described by you all. The GUI is very fast but when I have to do some changes or for example creating a new OpenVPN account, I have to wait like 1-2 minutes until one step finishes. I'm running on nanobsd (4g). I don't belive it's the CF card since it is, I hope I'm not wrong, a Transcend Ultimate 600x CF card.

Cheers,
Szop

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 #7

Updated by Jim Pingle about 12 years ago

Two more points of data:
  • Enabling write caching has no effect on speed.
  • Switching from UFS to UFS2 has no effect on speed.
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 #8

Updated by Ermal Luçi about 12 years ago

  • Status changed from New to Feedback
  • % Done changed from 0 to 100

Applied in changeset pfsense-tools:commit:008742971cb44d8c0f81929504ab7330442c4ba4.

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 #9

Updated by Phillip Davis about 12 years ago

Fantastic, I have upgraded 7 Alix nanobsd systems to 2.1-BETA1. They all do conf_mount_ro in under 1 second now. Well done to all those who spent time on this. I can give all my friends a pfSense 2.1-BETA1 for Christmas:)

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 #10

Updated by Chris Buechler about 12 years ago

  • Status changed from Feedback to Resolved
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