High CPU Usage, I think, please let me know if this is normal

[JaymesDriver]

Hello,

I have been using OPNsense for a few months now, and something has been bothering me.  I run OPNSense on a Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.0 GHZ.

The poor processor runs at 51% or higher the entire time the system is running.  I went a head and installed the updates that were available last night, This brought me up to:

"OPNsense 15.7.22-i386   
FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE-p24   
OpenSSL 1.0.2e 3 Dec 2015"

I was hoping that an update would have come out by now that addressed the issue.  So my first question, is this an acceptable processor?  Should I be looking for something different?  I would like to know what I can do to figure out what is reaming the CPU, and how I can gather some information to help determine the issue if the problem is not the processor itself.

I have less than 15 devices in my network, and most of the time only 5 are constantly connected.  This seems like a really high usage to me!  Is this normal?

So far I love OPNSense, I am in the process of trying to acquire an i3 to see if putting a better processor in the machine will bring the CPU usage down any, but in the mean time I wanted to come to the forums to see what you guys recommend.

I did some searching but I wasn't able to find a topic that was closely related to mine.  I found some topics that talked about Virtual Machines, but this is a physical machine and it is reporting a MUCH higher usage than 30%.

Please let me know what I can do to alleviate some stress on the CPU or to figure out what is causing the issues!  I appreciate any insight and assistance!

I am in the process of setting up a secondary machine for testing.  It is very similar in set up to my current firewall, this is only to test to see what the CPU usage would be like with different equipment.

[JaymesDriver]

Maybe I am misunderstanding the reading, or what the sensor is even monitoring.

What is the "CPU Usage" in the OPNsense UI monitoring?

[smajor]

I have the exactly the same CPU as you and that's typically what I see mine at. I can't say if that's normal or not.

[weust]

That's not normal for sure.
But, there could be a FreeBSD bug causing it since you both have the exact same CPU?

[smajor]

While troubleshooting a different issue, I noted that Squid was using most all of that...

top -SH from Shell showed it at ~35%. I did find something noting Squid using that much can be normal on an older Squid.org mailing list.

I've had to disable Squid for a different reason and that dropped me to about 5% CPU usage.

[smajor]

Update, I did get my Squid issues sorted and turned it back on.  My CPU usage is down to about 5%.

Perhaps my initial Squid errors were causing it to restart over and over and thus the high load.

[franco]

JaymesDriver, have you been using the squid proxy server in ACL mode?

If not, we'll have to see the top output for your box to make an educated guess.

[JaymesDriver]

Hi franco!  And thanks for your reply, in both threads!

Sorry for my silence, it was the holidays so I was busy celebrating!

I will gather some more information for you this afternoon.  I will verify again (as I think I did this once, but I have slept since then so I want to be certain) that squid is disabled and not in use.

I can get the top information as you have requested later this afternoon.

[JaymesDriver]

Unfortunately, My OS crashed last night.  Not sure what happened.  It brought me to the log in screen, after log in, it just hung and locked up, it never finished logging in.

So I popped in the CD and did a fresh install.  Now the CPU Usage is reporting 0%.  I didn't install any of the updates yet, I wanted to see how it behaves before I add more headache to the matter.

I will monitor it closely and let you know if I experience the spikes again.  If I do experience them, I will check the WAN interface (by pulling the plug) to see if removing the WAN network brings the usage down.

I will also gather some TOP information and bring it back to you.  Thanks again for the ideas.  I will let you know if the router begins to misbehave again!