New Default GELI kern.geom.eli.threads Value Proposal

From: vermaden <vermaden_at_interia.pl>
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