High CPU usage

Started by waxhead, March 14, 2018, 12:40:38 AM

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Hi there,

Being happy with OPNsense so far I just upgraded form a older 32bit Xeon processor to a 'new' Core 2 Duo E6400 system. The system feels a bit snappier and I expected CPU usage to be significantly lower as well, but it's not. It is in fact higher than what it was with the 32bit Xeon.

The cause seems to be this (system->activity)
PID,   USERNAME,PRI,NICE,SIZE,RES,STATE,C,TIME,WCPU,COMMAND
12   root   -56   -   0K   336K   CPU1   1   10:20   75.88%   [intr{swi5: fast taskq}]

Not being familiar with FreeBSD I have no idea what this, a bit of googling around seems to indicate that this caused by the realtek NIC's on the motherboard. Should I be concerned? if yes, any advice on how to fix this issue?

Last time (many years ago) I used Realtek NICs took me 5 minutes to pull the card out and use it as a heating agent for the ants outside (as I set it on fire). This is no joke :)

Would it be possible to change the Realteks to some Intel NICs?

These are really cheap:
IntelĀ® Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter

Or, you can try this, it works great with OPNsense and also cheap on the SH market:
https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=7561.0
OPNsense v18 | HW: Gigabyte Z370N-WIFI, i3-8100, 8GB RAM, 60GB SSD, | Controllers: 82575GB-quad, 82574, I221, I219-V | PPPoE: RDS Romania | Down: 980Mbit/s | Up: 500Mbit/s

Team Rebellion Member

March 14, 2018, 04:51:38 PM #2 Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 04:55:08 PM by dcol
I totally agree with disabling the RealTek NIC's.
As far as the CPU usage goes. Disable IDS and see if it drops. You may have too many IDS rules enabled for the CPU to handle.