New Default GELI kern.geom.eli.threads Value Proposal
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2026 18:13:01 UTC
Hi.
By default GELI uses all threads available on a system - like from nproc(1) output.
But this 'default' is per device.
I just came across one of my clients servers to 'check for possible performance improvements' and ... they had 840 GELI threads - 40 threads for each of 21 disks.
This happened because client left 'kern.geom.eli.threads' on a default value.
My proposal -> Change the default GELI threads value to number of physical cores.
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So if someone has 20 physical cores with SMT - which means 40 threads - the 20 value should be used.
It can be made in the source code or as intermediate step - as a config option put automatically in loader.conf(5) or sysctl.conf(5) during installation.
The nproc(1) is already in Base System ... or 'kern.smp.cores' can be also used as source of information.
Regards,
vermaden