So I just came across this little tidbit while searching for potential solutions to the re: watchdog timeout issue on the firebox installs that I have pfSense running on. Some folks suggest that the problem is due to an interrupt storm which can result in a partial/total system hang. While doing further research, I found this:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/acpi-debug.html Specifically: ------------------ 11.16.3.3 System Hangs (temporary or permanent) Most system hangs are a result of lost interrupts or an interrupt storm. Chipsets have a lot of problems based on how the BIOS configures interrupts before boot, correctness of the APIC (MADT) table, and routing of the System Control Interrupt (SCI). Interrupt storms can be distinguished from lost interrupts by checking the output of vmstat -i and looking at the line that has acpi0. If the counter is increasing at more than a couple per second, you have an interrupt storm. If the system appears hung, try breaking to DDB (CTRL+ALT+ESC on console) and type show interrupts. Your best hope when dealing with interrupt problems is to try disabling APIC support with hint.apic.0.disabled="1" in loader.conf. ------------------ hint.apic.0.disabled=1? I thought it was hint.acpi.0.disabled=1 (see http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Booting_Options, and also the forum posts regarding firebox installs) Is there a typo here or are these two totally different things? I have not tried the hint.apic.0.disabled=1 yet, but I plan to tomorrow. Also, are the double quotes of particular importance? Some docs show them there, others don't. Any info appreciated.. I think these old end of life firebox x series units would be great for pfSense, provided we can get the watchdog timeouts to go away (and a specially sized sticker than can cover up the Firebox X logo J) Dimitri Rodis Integrita Systems LLC
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