ZFS on FreeBSD 11.3 slower than 10.4

[Miroslav Lachman]

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