From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 5 05:37:35 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 352A91065674 for ; Mon, 5 Jul 2010 05:37:35 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk) Received: from smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (gate6.infracaninophile.co.uk [IPv6:2001:8b0:151:1::1]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 846678FC08 for ; Mon, 5 Jul 2010 05:37:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from seedling.black-earth.co.uk (seedling.black-earth.co.uk [81.187.76.163]) (authenticated bits=0) by smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id o655bMBg019108 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Mon, 5 Jul 2010 06:37:29 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk) Message-ID: <4C316F92.10507@infracaninophile.co.uk> Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2010 06:37:22 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman Organization: Infracaninophile User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.10) Gecko/20100512 Thunderbird/3.0.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: David Warren References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.0.1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: clamav-milter 0.96.1 at lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,DKIM_ADSP_ALL, SPF_FAIL autolearn=no version=3.3.1 X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 8.0 network problem X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:37:35 -0000 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 05/07/2010 01:52:11, David Warren wrote: > I've got a persistent problem with my LAN. I'm running a FreeBSD 8.0 > box as a home server performing the following functions for wired and > wireless networks: router; firewall; DHCP server; and file server. For what > it's worth, I've got ZFS up and running as the main filesystem. The > recurring issue is that file transfers from the FreeBSD box to computers on > the wired network (gigabit) start out fast and then become agonizingly > slow. I'm sharing home directories over Samba, and those transfers work > briefly and then tail off to a few kilobytes per second. The failure is > somewhat predicatable in that it tends to happen once a few hundred > megabytes have been transferred. I've swapped out hardware, I've Googled > extensively, and all of the (possibly benign) error messages that I've found > have been eliminated. I'm happy to post logs, configs, etc., and I'd > appreciate any help with a diagnosis. For the moment: Does this affect both wired and wireless LANs? Does this affect specific protocols more severely than other protocols? Does this affect all traffic happening at that point, all traffic on a particular interface or just specific connections? The effect you describe sounds bizarrely like entropy-pool exhaustion, which would kill any traffic over your wireless network, or anything using crypto protocols on either wired or wireless nets. I say "sounds like" because the yarrow entropy pool maintenance code in FreeBSD is extremely good, and I've seen FreeBSD boxes serving HTTPS at Mb/s without anything like what you are experiencing. Also, you're seeing it affect Samba over a wired connection, and that should be minimally affected by that sort of thing. Hmmm... Can you try transferring some large files (DVD .iso images around a few GB in size are handy for this) between systems using: * netcat or HTTP over wired connection * ssh over wired connection * netcat or HTTP over wireless * ssh over wireless Try these in both directions -- this should help show if it's slow disk performance on the receiving side. Also, check the output of 'netstat -i' to see if interface error counters are increasing: Ierrors, Idrop and Oerrors should all ideally be zero. If you see those starting to rise, it means either there's a configuration problem somewhere, like a duplex mismatch [no evidence for that from the ifconfig output you showed though] or perhaps there's still some dodgy hardware somewhere on your network despite all the swapping-out you've been doing. One final thought -- perhaps this isn't to do with the network at all, but it's disk IO performance bottoming out. In which case you should be able to see much the same effect copying files between different zpools, or between your main zpool and say, a USB memory stick. Cheers, Matthew - -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard Flat 3 PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate JID: matthew@infracaninophile.co.uk Kent, CT11 9PW -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkwxb5IACgkQ8Mjk52CukIz6xQCffeqtaiZ5zc8JDX5EWzGAgdPo 1BoAn0F7Upq4QoTkg2O8mUPBCnYtom/T =EqiV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----