Reason for FreeNAS Security Message?

[Charles Elliott]

Yesterday (9/14/15) at 3:00 AM FreeNAS (9.2.1.9) sent my main system the following message:

"FreeNAS.local.celliott.us kernel log messages:
> Timecounter "TSC-low" frequency 1166772351 Hz quality 1000
-- End of security output --"

This is the second one of these messages in as many weeks. A search back as far as 4/3/14 reveals only one other of these messages on 7/1/15 at 3:01 AM.

The CPU on which FreeNAS is running (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 3065 @ 2.33GHz (2333.54-MHz K8-class CPU) has other counters, which FreeNAS enumerates at boot time:

Timecounter "HPET" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 950
Event timer "HPET" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 450
Event timer "HPET1" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 440
Event timer "HPET2" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 440
Event timer "HPET3" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 440
Event timer "RTC" frequency 32768 Hz quality 0
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
Event timer "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 100
Timecounter "ACPI-fast" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 900


The "TSC-low" frequency 1166772351 Hz quality 1000 time counter appears much later in the boot sequence than the above counter and timers.

Can anyone tell me of the import of this FreeNAS security message?

 

[cyberjock]

Two things:

1. I doubt the message means anything at all.
2. There's a strong possibility you're getting the message because you're using a system with a FSB. FSBs are a real bottleneck for FreeNAS systems because of how ZFS works. Likewise, because of the age of your hardware, there aren't many datapoints to validate if you have a problem or not because we don't recommend systems with a FSB at all. They're so old that there's no telling what drivers may not be compatible with the hardware, etc.

 

[Charles Elliott]

Two things:

1. I doubt the message means anything at all.
2. There's a strong possibility you're getting the message because you're using a system with a FSB. FSBs are a real bottleneck for FreeNAS systems because of how ZFS works. Likewise, because of the age of your hardware, there aren't many datapoints to validate if you have a problem or not because we don't recommend systems with a FSB at all. They're so old that there's no telling what drivers may not be compatible with the hardware, etc.

Thanks for your prompt reply; I appreciate your help.

Does FSB in this case mean Front-Side Bus?

FreeNAS for me is working well now. The other day I was transferring a long file, so I fired up Task Manger to see how fast the file was moving. It was regularly hitting 500 Mbps. What more could a lad ask for?

 

[cyberjock]

Thanks for your prompt reply; I appreciate your help.

Does FSB in this case mean Front-Side Bus?

FreeNAS for me is working well now. The other day I was transferring a long file, so I fired up Task Manger to see how fast the file was moving. It was regularly hitting 500 Mbps. What more could a lad ask for?

FSB is indeed Front Side Bus.

There is far, far more to hardware than just throughput. Just ask the poor saps that use hardware RAID with ZFS. :P

 

[scwst]

For the record, I just got "Timecounter "TSC-low" frequency 1200028848 Hz quality 1000" for the first time tonight as a mail. AFAIK, everything works fine, Internet says "this just happens". Will post additional stuff here if it should turn out to be otherwise.

 

[Stux]

Imagining some time related service rebooted? And thus relogged the timer it was using?

 

[scwst]

At this point, it doesn't seem to be worth chasing down, just added this to the record for other people and future reference, because I spent some time googling this.

 

[LimeCrusher]

Just got the following email:

Code:

freenas.local kernel log messages:
> CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G2130 @ 3.20GHz (3200.10-MHz K8-class CPU)
> Timecounter "TSC-low" frequency 1600049166 Hz quality 1000
> ugen0.1: <Intel EHCI root HUB> at usbus0
> uhub0: <Intel EHCI root HUB, class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus1
> uhub1: <Intel EHCI root HUB, class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus0
> uhub2 on uhub0
> uhub2: <vendor 0x8087 product 0x0024, class 9/0, rev 2.00/0.00, addr 2> on usbus1
> ugen0.2: <vendor 0x8087 product 0x0024> at usbus0
> uhub3: <vendor 0x8087 product 0x0024, class 9/0, rev 2.00/0.00, addr 2> on usbus0
> uhub3: 6 ports with 6 removable, self powered
> ukbd0 on uhub3
> ums0 on uhub3

-- End of security output --

I had shut down the server about 12 hours before because of a heatwave before restarting it about 6 hours later. The whole thing looks like a boot log but I can't locate the exact file it is logged in to get the timestamps.