5 ms·

I am also seeing really poor write speeds when comparing to my Linux droplets. 11MB/sec vs. 216MB/sec on Linux

nine_k 12y ago
Are these the same datacenter? The same rack? I suspect that degraded instances and overly-busy disks are not endemic to AWS.
- czk 12y ago
  Mine are both in NYC3, so same datacenter. No clue regarding rack/host. I can't comment on AWS...
andrewthetechie 12y ago
With FreeBSD, in order to be able to have automatic backups work, we were required to disable journaling on the disk. This will cause the disk speed to be much slower than our Linux distributions. If you wish to have higher disk speeds, but not use backups, we recommend for you to remount your disk with journaling. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/gjournal-desktop/configure-journal.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/gjournal-desktop/con...
- vbit 12y ago
  Why did journaling interfere with automatic backups?
  - stock_toaster 12y ago
    journaling generally interferes with dump(8). It seems odd that they would be using dump to do backups though, since they are virtualizing the OS. The parent link to gjournal is weird too, since gjournal is not the same as softupdates w/journaling (SU+J). It makes me wonder if they actually disabled softupdates too. I found a random post[1] about issues (unmapped io?) running i386 freebsd with su+j in virtualbox (apparently a virtualbox bug[2]). [1]: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-10-i386-data-corruption-problems-in-virtual-machines-was-do-not-use-soft-update.42573/#post-239679 https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-10-i386-data-corr... [2]: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2013-November/046219.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2013-Nov...
- alberth 12y ago
  DO disabling journaling is a big deal. What else has DO disabled and/or modified from a vanilla install?
  - shiftpgdn 12y ago
    DO modifies a lot of stuff on vanillas installs. They're one of the only providers I know of that removes the swap partition.
    - alberth 12y ago
      Where does DO document all of the modifications they make to a vanilla FreeBSD install?
- mst 12y ago
  That deserves an explanation - you can backup non-ext2 linux partitions, surely? What have I misunderstood?
- mietek 12y ago
  This should be done by default on droplets which do not have backups enabled.
- easytiger 12y ago
  > required to disable journaling on the disk Shouldn't this make it much faster as the FS no longer maintains a journal?
- sullrich 12y ago
  So I enabled Journaling and that brought it up to 30MB/sec. Still a substantial difference vs 216MB/sec for Linux.. Something with the D.O. KVM HOST setup needs to be tweaked a bit - 30MB/sec is pretty poor quality disk throughput for SSD attached storage.
- vhbit 12y ago
  There is no way to boot into single user mode for now (or at least instructions provided aren't working).
  - vhbit 12y ago
    And the reason was invalid /boot/loader.conf: console="vidconsole,comconsole" autoboot_delay="10" console="comconsole,vidconsole" autoboot_delay="1" Second console actually disables access from web console access, which is fatal. Autoboot is not critical, although default to 3 sec should work much better for opportunity to change boot options from web console.
    - saper 12y ago
      This got apparently fixed, in my "ams3" instance I've had to issues getting web console to work (needed to "tunefs -n enable /")
- Nizumzen 12y ago
  I just use Vultr and install from a FreeBSD downloaded ISO. No modifications to the base install at all and works as expected. DO have screwed something up with their configuration if they need to make so many changes to make it work. No other VPS provider I have used that support FreeBSD (or OpenBSD for that matter) require any changes to the default install.
- crest 12y ago
  On UFS soft-updates have a lower overhead than soft-updates with metadata journaling. The downside of soft-updates without journaling is that it requires a background fsck to recover leaked space after unclean shutdowns. I prefer UFS2 SU (not SU+J) on FreeBSD for small systems, because SU+J is incompatible with UFS snapshots.

Are these the same datacenter? The same rack? I suspect that degraded instances and overly-busy disks are not endemic to AWS.

czk 12y ago
Mine are both in NYC3, so same datacenter. No clue regarding rack/host. I can't comment on AWS...

andrewthetechie 12y ago

With FreeBSD, in order to be able to have automatic backups work, we were required to disable journaling on the disk. This will cause the disk speed to be much slower than our Linux distributions. If you wish to have higher disk speeds, but not use backups, we recommend for you to remount your disk with journaling. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/gjournal-desktop/configure-journal.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/gjournal-desktop/con...

vbit 12y ago
Why did journaling interfere with automatic backups?
- stock_toaster 12y ago
  journaling generally interferes with dump(8). It seems odd that they would be using dump to do backups though, since they are virtualizing the OS. The parent link to gjournal is weird too, since gjournal is not the same as softupdates w/journaling (SU+J). It makes me wonder if they actually disabled softupdates too. I found a random post[1] about issues (unmapped io?) running i386 freebsd with su+j in virtualbox (apparently a virtualbox bug[2]). [1]: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-10-i386-data-corruption-problems-in-virtual-machines-was-do-not-use-soft-update.42573/#post-239679 https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-10-i386-data-corr... [2]: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2013-November/046219.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2013-Nov...
alberth 12y ago
DO disabling journaling is a big deal. What else has DO disabled and/or modified from a vanilla install?
- shiftpgdn 12y ago
  DO modifies a lot of stuff on vanillas installs. They're one of the only providers I know of that removes the swap partition.
  - alberth 12y ago
    Where does DO document all of the modifications they make to a vanilla FreeBSD install?
mst 12y ago
That deserves an explanation - you can backup non-ext2 linux partitions, surely? What have I misunderstood?
mietek 12y ago
This should be done by default on droplets which do not have backups enabled.
easytiger 12y ago
> required to disable journaling on the disk Shouldn't this make it much faster as the FS no longer maintains a journal?
sullrich 12y ago
So I enabled Journaling and that brought it up to 30MB/sec. Still a substantial difference vs 216MB/sec for Linux.. Something with the D.O. KVM HOST setup needs to be tweaked a bit - 30MB/sec is pretty poor quality disk throughput for SSD attached storage.
vhbit 12y ago
There is no way to boot into single user mode for now (or at least instructions provided aren't working).
- vhbit 12y ago
  And the reason was invalid /boot/loader.conf: console="vidconsole,comconsole" autoboot_delay="10" console="comconsole,vidconsole" autoboot_delay="1" Second console actually disables access from web console access, which is fatal. Autoboot is not critical, although default to 3 sec should work much better for opportunity to change boot options from web console.
  - saper 12y ago
    This got apparently fixed, in my "ams3" instance I've had to issues getting web console to work (needed to "tunefs -n enable /")
Nizumzen 12y ago
I just use Vultr and install from a FreeBSD downloaded ISO. No modifications to the base install at all and works as expected. DO have screwed something up with their configuration if they need to make so many changes to make it work. No other VPS provider I have used that support FreeBSD (or OpenBSD for that matter) require any changes to the default install.
crest 12y ago
On UFS soft-updates have a lower overhead than soft-updates with metadata journaling. The downside of soft-updates without journaling is that it requires a background fsck to recover leaked space after unclean shutdowns. I prefer UFS2 SU (not SU+J) on FreeBSD for small systems, because SU+J is incompatible with UFS snapshots.