ZFS on FreeBSD 11.3 slower than 10.4

[Ronald Klop]

On Fri, 05 Jun 2020 22:57:15 +0200, Ronald Klop <ronald-lists at klop.ws>  
wrote:

> On Sat, 30 May 2020 23:29:48 +0200, Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd at quip.cz>  
> wrote:
>
>> On 2020-05-30 22:10, Ronald Klop wrote:
>>> On Sat, 23 May 2020 21:44:03 +0200, Miroslav Lachman  
>>> <000.fbsd at quip.cz> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I upgraded my old desktop computer few month ago from old 10.4 based  
>>>> PC-BSD to stock FreeBSD 11.3. It uses single 2TB HDD 7200rpm.
>>>> My problem is that upgraded version is really slow and some desktop  
>>>> applications are very lagging (playing multimedia is interrupted for  
>>>> a fraction of seconds) when there is heavy filesystem activity.
>>>>
>>>> I am using zfsnap2 for taking snapshots periodically and when there  
>>>> is enough snapshots zfs destroy is called. In this time the user  
>>>> experience is terrible. Starting new application like browser or even  
>>>> something much smaller takes minutes. The old version based on  
>>>> FreeBSD 10.4 behaves much better. I used the old version for years  
>>>> and never have problems with interrupted multimedia playback.
>>>>
>>>> Are there some sysctls to tune to get better desktop interactivity in  
>>>> heavy filesystem operations like zfs destroy, pkg check or other  
>>>> "find" periodic scripts?
>>
>>
>>> How full is the disk? ZFS has poor performance if the disk becomes  
>>> full.
>>> What is in /etc/sysctl.conf and /boot/loader.conf?
>>> And did you try to boot 12.1 and did it have the same behavious?
>>
>> It is currently 77% full. But it is the same pool with the same  
>> capacity as with 10.4.
>>
>> I didn't try 12.1, I need to stay on 11.3 for now.
>>
>> ## loader.conf
>>
>> nvidia_load="YES"
>> drm_load="YES"
>> drm2_load="YES"
>> iicbus_load="YES"
>> vboxdrv_load="YES"
>> crypto_load="YES"
>> aesni_load="YES"
>> geom_eli_load="YES"
>> vfs.zfs.arc_max="1024M"
>> zfs_load="YES"
>> iicbus_load="YES"
>>
>> ## sysctl.conf
>>
>> kern.coredump=0
>> kern.maxfiles=49312
>> vfs.usermount=1
>> security.jail.allow_raw_sockets=1
>> security.jail.sysvipc_allowed=1
>> security.jail.mount_allowed=1
>> security.jail.chflags_allowed=1
>> hw.syscons.bell=0
>> kern.sched.preempt_thresh=224
>> kern.ipc.shm_allow_removed=1
>> kern.shutdown.poweroff_delay=500
>> kern.bootfile=/boot/kernel/kernel
>> hw.usb.no_shutdown_wait=1
>> hw.snd.default_unit=3
>> kern.sched.interact=10
>> vfs.aio.max_aio_per_proc=256
>> vfs.aio.max_aio_queue=8192
>> vfs.aio.max_aio_queue_per_proc=1024
>> vfs.aio.max_buf_aio=64
>> net.local.stream.recvspace=65536
>> net.local.stream.sendspace=65536
>>
>>
>> loader.conf and sysctl.conf are the same for 10.4 and 11.3 but 11.3 is  
>> much much slower when it comes to heavy IO like "find" daily periodic  
>> scripts, zfs destroy, starting new applications etc.
>>
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Miroslav Lachman
>
>
> I don't have anything I see which I'm sure will fix things, but you  
> could try to remove/comment some of these sysctls to see if 11.3 has  
> better defaults now.
> kern.sched.preempt_thresh, kern.maxfiles, kern.sched.interact, vfs.aio.*
>
> What kind of machine is it? CPU, MEM?
> What does gstat say about the saturation of the disk?
>
> Regards,
> Ronald.


What might also be interesting is which timer is selected. Sometimes for  
some reason another time-source is chosen which can influence a lot of  
things (like sound).
Please post the output of "sysctl kern.eventtimer" and "sysctl  
kern.timecounter" if possible of 10.4 and 11.3.

Or compare the /var/run/dmesg.boot files of 10.4 and 11.3 to see if some  
hardware is recognized differently.

Regards,
Ronald.