Pauven

Somehow I feel you were secretly calling out to me to update the Unraid Tunables Tester. 😎 Maybe it is time.

Just a quick followup on this (predicting your next rebuttal): The motherboard vendor's QVL list includes overclocked speeds. They are simply communicating that they have successfully tested the memory at that speed, and provided the necessary BIOS support to enable it. But in the eyes of AMD, if it exceeds the limits I listed above, it is overclocked. Paul

[Edited to address John_M's complaint that I was making unfounded assumptions on his setup. Bolded blue sentences below have been edited to clarify my original helpful intent. I never mean to insinuate John_M was in fact overclocking, I had no way to know for sure and thought I had said as much later in my post, so that was a lazy choice of wording on my part.] They are not suggesting that you're overclocking the memory. They are suggesting that you're overclocking the built-in memory controller in your Ryzen CPU. Depending upon your actual memory configuration, you might be overclocking it by quite a bit, or not at all. For example, on my Ryzen 7 1800X, I'm running my memory at 2400, which sounds low but it is definitely overclocked. The RAM itself is rated for 2400, so the RAM isn't overclocked. But my memory, 4x 16GB sticks, is Dual Rank, so I'm presenting the highest possible memory load on the 1800X. Here's AMD's non-overclocked supported memory speeds for Ryzen 1st generation: 2666 MHz for 2 Single Rank DIMMs in Dual Channel 2400 MHz for 2 Dual Rank DIMMs in Dual Channel 2133 MHz for 4 Single Rank DIMMs in Dual Channel 1866 MHz for 4 Dual Rank DIMMs in Dual Channel As you can see, the non-overclocked speed for my memory configuration is 1866. This is a memory controller limitation, not a RAM limitation. By running them at 2400MHz, I have a 533MHz overclock on the memory controller. 2666 may or may not be an overclock on your system, depending upon the number of sticks of RAM and whether they are Single Rank or Dual Rank. But odds are that if you have anything other than 2 sticks of 8GB RAM (which are often Single Rank but not always), you are overclocked. Paul

Hey Lime Tech, Just curious if the compilation errors are still a problem. I see 4.18 is coming out in a week, which made me wonder if that would fix the compilation errors if they were still a problem.. Paul

Last week I purchased Superorb's other posting for an unopened WD Red 8TB drive, and I received it today. It was exactly as advertised, and Superorb shipped reasonably quickly. I've got it installed and I'm pre-clearing it now. Thought I would share in case anyone is interested. Thanks Superorb! Paul

I'll take it. I'll send you a PM. Paul

No, still required. For psychological reasons only, though. We all have our demons.

I can't speak for Lime Tech, but I can relate my own experience 3 years ago when I moved. I didn't want to trust the movers with my PC's and server, so I moved these all myself. My unRAID server is a large, 24-bay X-Case rackmount, and I find it pretty heavy on it's own. Even with just 16 drives installed, I found it too heavy for me to manage on my own. So I pulled the drives, and with a black sharpie marker, I wrote the bay number on each drive, and then bubble-wrapped and boxed them. Once I was at the destination, I double-checked all my cabling, and reinserted the drives into their original bays. Everything came up perfectly. I hope the various Lime Tech moves went well. Paul

I look forward to it. I really appreciate the excellent follow-up. As a long-time customer, the Lime-Tech transformation is nothing short of magical. Paul

Thank you, very much appreciated!

At that point, it has already been loaded, and is no different than me unloading it from the command line. I want a way to prevent it from ever loading in the first place.

Interesting results. After loading the linux scaling driver, does the behavior revert to the Ryzen PBoost curve when you unload the driver, or do you have to reboot. I don't see where my driver is getting loaded, which makes me think it is automatic by the kernel. Not sure how I would block it during the boot. I just read that Ryzen microcode updates were finally added to the linux-firmware.git collection. This makes me think my Ryzen 1800X has never received any microcode firmware updates. Not sure if that would affect the boost or not, but regardless I posted a request for including the new microcode updates here: https://lime-technology.com/bug-reports/stable-releases/652-amd-cpu-microcode-updates-r84/

I feel that I have essentially already done this test. With everything unloaded and nothing running, unRAID reports that all 16 cores are idle at 0%. I can then run a command to load a single core, and it never exceeds 3.7GHz. I have also repeatedly seen 14 cores idling at 2.2GHz, and the other 2 at 3.7GHz, which seems to corroborate that I am loading only a single core. I have also used other commands to test frequency, besides grepping /proc/cpuinfo. So far, the other commands essentially matched the /proc/cpuinfo, and if anything they were slightly lower. Sorry, I don't have all the commands in front of me, I found them during web searches (supposedly they were more accurate for Ryzen), gave them a try, and moved on. I certainly agree that, based upon that graphic, the Ryzen 2xxx series will hit higher frequencies with more cores active, which is really awesome. But that shouldn't change the fact that with only a single core loaded, a Ryzen 1800X should hit 4.0 GHz minimum, and 4.1 GHz with XFR. Mine never goes over 3.7GHz, which is the same frequency that I can easily hit with all cores using the Performance governor. Perhaps I am mistaken, and that even when it appears that only a single core is loaded, in reality more cores are active. In which case, I agree that the graphic perfectly explains what is going on. Paul

That worked, thanks! Now I get this: root@Tower:~# cpufreq-info cpufrequtils 008: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009 Report errors and bugs to [email protected], please. analyzing CPU 0: no or unknown cpufreq driver is active on this CPU maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms. for all 16 CPU's. I also see "Driver: * no driver *" for CPU Frequency Scaling in Tips & Tweaks, and changing from On Demand to Performance no longer has any impact, where before it would push all cores to 3.7GHz. So the behavior is now very similar to react's system. But I'm not seeing anything above 3.7GHz. Top speeds looks the same. I wonder if it has to boot that way. Perhaps stripping the driver out of a running system doesn't have the same result as booting without a driver. And I still need to look in my BIOS again to see if there is a setting related to giving the OS control over frequency scaling. Paul

Very interesting! Thanks react! I might be reading between the lines, but it looks like you don't have a software cpu frequency driver running at all, so it is defaulting to hardware frequency control. I have the acpi-cpufreq driver controlling the frequencies, which overrides the hardware control. Perhaps the problem is with the acpi-cpufreq driver. My guess is that you didn't see any change when switching from Conservative to Performance because you don't have a driver, so you aren't really controlling anything. Anyone know how I can unload the acpi-cpufreq driver? I also recall some settings in the BIOS that I think were related to allowing the operating system to control frequency - though I might be imagining that now. I'll have to look again. Maybe I can disable software/OS control. Paul

Not sure I agree with your interpretation. The 1800x base clock is is 3.6GHz, and the single core boost is 4.0GHz. XFR adds 0.1GHz to both of those numbers. I'm getting 3.7Ghz all core, so I think XFR is working. To me, it seems the boost isn't working. Core Performance Boost (CPB) allows individual cores to boost up to 4GHz (4.1GHz with XFR) on the 1800x. This works on Windows. CPB support for early/first release 1800X's (which is what I have) was added to Linux kernel 4.14 (it was broken prior to that), and I've verified that the CPB flag is showing. I just did some more testing. Upgraded my BIOS to the latest, (which includes the new AGESA 1.0.0.1a) but that made no difference. Also tried disabling SVM in the BIOS, as I read somewhere that solved another user's problem with no single-core boost in Linux. Disabling SVM broke KVM (which I definitely need) and did not fix the boost issue anyway. My temps are fine, and my cooling is sufficient. I could easily overclock all cores to 4.0GHz, but I choose not to. Stability, longevity, and power conservation are more important to me. All the same, this CPU should boost a single core up to 4.1GHz, and it just won't do it under Linux. react, since you have a 2700x, what do you get for this command? root@Tower:~# cpufreq-info cpufrequtils 008: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009 Report errors and bugs to [email protected], please. analyzing CPU 0: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0 maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms. hardware limits: 2.20 GHz - 3.60 GHz available frequency steps: 3.60 GHz, 3.20 GHz, 2.20 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, userspace, powersave, ondemand, performance, schedutil current policy: frequency should be within 2.20 GHz and 3.60 GHz. The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.20 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 3.60 GHz:6.43%, 3.20 GHz:4.04%, 2.20 GHz:89.53% (6269) Paul

I did a bit more testing. Rebooting to complete the 6.5.2 installation, I double-checked my BIOS to make sure all the settings appeared correct. While everything looks fine, I don't see an XFR setting at all in my BIOS. I think it is safe to assume it is enabled. In Tips & Tweaks, I found that if I change "Enable Intel Turbo Boost?" to Yes (I had it on No before), then my max core frequency changes to 3.7GHz, so that's a small improvement. I tried changing the "CPU Scaling Governor", and on Performance all cores basically idled at 3.7GHz. On Demand allows other cores to scale down, normally hitting around 2.1GHz, and I can see my 1 or 2 cores hitting 3.7GHz, but no higher. Power Saver basically forces all cores down to about 2.2GHz. The odd part here is that the motherboard/cpu easily hits an 8/16 core frequency of 3.7GHz, which is perfect, but refuses to boost a single core any higher than 3.7GHz, even if only a single core is loaded. I agree that I'm glad it is fixed, I'm just baffled that I'm not finding any additional info on the web regarding the problem or the solution. Paul

I can't believe that there isn't more discussion on this, as it certainly caught my attention. I have an 1800X, and my individual core's max out at 3.6GHz with unRAID, even when only a single core is loaded. I always figured that this was just a limitation of Linux, as in earlier testing I saw 4.1GHz in Windows. Now react comes along and shows boosting working perfectly on a 2700X, what's up with that? While I know that the 2xxx series on the X470 motherboards adds Precision Boost 2 and XFR2, these simply permit more aggressive boosting when more cores are loaded, and shouldn't be required for boosting when only a single core was loaded. I never see over 3.6GHz (I don't manually overclock). Is this the same experience of other Ryzen 1 users? Is there a change in Ryzen 2 or X470 that fixes this issue, or a system setting or BIOS setting I might have wrong? Paul

Hey gang, sorry I've been absent. Luckily I've been healthy, so no concerns there. Instead, I've been sidetracked by by work and other projects. My biggest sidetrack has been a new program I wrote to replace the old My Movies Media Center Plugin. That may be of some interest to unRAID users like me who store their large movie collections on their server: If you're interested, you can check it out here: MM Browser MM Browser was supposed to be a quick little 2-4 week programming project, just for myself, but then I went crazy and decided to sell it online, which required a ton more programming and a website. User support has been much more time consuming than I ever fathomed. I've easily spent 6 months full time on MM Browser. MM Browser pulled me away from my other project, the Chameleon Pinball Engine. I had planned to have it ready for the next big Southern Fried Gameroom Expo here in Atlanta. Somehow the time slipped away. The show is in 4 weeks, and I'm realizing that there's too much work to make up to make to the show. That's a big disappointment for me. I've also got a a small enterprise software suite that I've worked on for the past decade, and I'm currently working on my first big sale. Trying to sell enterprise software to, uhm, big enterprises, has been eye opening to say the least. So many hurdles, and I'm spending more time doing documentation than anything else. Right now this is my biggest priority. Plus I've got a full time consulting gig at the moment. Long story short, I just haven't a moment to spare. I would release the private beta, but to be honest it just didn't work well, so that version was scrapped. I have documented plans for a new version that hopefully would fix the problems of the private beta. Every so often I think about trying to knock it out, and I've come close to working on it a few times, but it just fell too low on my priority list. There's always a chance I may get to it soon, but I can't make any promises. I know that this isn't the answer anyone was looking for. Sorry. If anyone else wants to run with it, please feel free. You have my blessing. Paul

It's like you're inside my head! I added mine to the survey. Did you want us to include our Username? A couple notes on my build. My Ryzen server has always been highly susceptible to the stability issues, and I always had to disable C-state Global Control in the BIOS to solve them. For over a month now I've been running with "/usr/local/sbin/zenstates --c6-disable" in my go file, and C-state Global Control enabled, and I am running stable. I don't do GPU passthrough, but I am currently running 4 VM's. I'm running 3 VM's with Windows Server 2016 Standard, each with 4-cores and 16GB of RAM. These are running an enterprise web application that I am developing against. I'm also running a single VM with Windows Server 2016 Datacenter and SQL Server 2016, also with 4-cores and 16GB. This VMs is the database server for the other 3 application servers. Surprisingly, even with 16-cores and 64GB concurrently allocated, the unRAID server is running like a champ. I'm averaging about 37% CPU load, and 57% memory usage. The KVM technology is simply amazing. And I can still stream Blu-ray movies. I'm hammering these servers with requests, approximately 24 XML API requests per second per server, 40 HTTP requests per second per server, and 72 database queries per second, or 6.2 million DB queries per day. My current unRAID uptime is 32 days (when I installed 6.4.1), and the VM uptime is approaching 18 days during this stress test session. My only problem is that the database server ran out of disk storage as the audit table grew so large from all the DB requests... hehehe. Paul

Sorry, couldn't resist. What John stated is 100% correct, though some details were omitted. To build on John's statement, those maximum speeds are for Single-Rank DIMMs and typically only 2 populated slots. The most likely configuration this would achieve is 16GB of installed RAM (2x 8GB Single-Rank). If you are running Dual-Rank DIMMs (think 16GB DIMMs, though I believe some 8GB DIMMs can also be Dual-Rank), or have installed memory into all 4 DIMM slots, then the maximum supported frequency drops. And if you are running Dual-Rank DIMMs, AND have installed memory into all 4 DIMM slots, then the maximum supported frequency drops again. On my Ryzen 7 1800x build, I have installed 64GB, so that means I am running both Dual-Rank DIMMs and I have populated all 4 memory slots. While my memory is only running at DDR4-2400, technically that is overclocked, as maximum supported speed in this configuration is just DDR4-2133. While my ASRock board runs my memory at DDR4-2400 without any special configuration, I am running overclocked according to AMD Ryzen specifications. Depending upon the installed memory, Killer IQ may be overclocking the integrated Ryzen memory controller by nearly 50%. While initially all Ryzen boards had issues with RAM clocks, the situation has greatly improved over the past year, so that Killer IQ's assertion is no longer valid. As G.I. Joe says, "Knowing is half the battle." Paul

Is that a thing? All I know is I needed the kvm_intel.netsted=1 statement to allow VMWare images to play inside a Linux VM, and it works even on my Ryzen box. Without this option, the passed through CPU reports no VM capabilities. But I'll look into it further, maybe the AMD version would work even better...

Change is made. I'll test and report back. Full disclosure, my append line has some extra baggage: label unRAID OS menu default kernel /bzimage append initrd=/bzroot acpi_enforce_resources=lax kvm_intel.nested=1 rcu_nocbs=0-15

Technically, I think the m/b manufacturers are just programming to AMD spec, so the problem is still getting AMD to say what this feature does on their processor. No, I have never tried the rcu_nocbs kernel option. Since I have a Ryzen R7-1800X, I would need 'rcu_nocbs=0-15', correct? I don't know how to apply this, can you point me in the right direction please? To the best of my ability, yes same kernel. But this was 9 months ago, when Ryzen was first released. I think my testing was on the 4.10 or 4.11 branches, and after rc7a I never tested again with any new kernels, as I thought this was a resolved issue. I'll do ya one better: Point me to a distro that does hang, and I will test it. If it hangs, I'll shut up about it, but if it doesn't... Is this information public somewhere? I would appreciate a pointer if it is. I am a major AMD shareholder, and don't mind pursuing Investor Relations for an answer to this issue, but I need to know what I'm talking about. Thanks, Paul