[Bro] Bro's limitations with high worker count and memory exhaustion

Baxter Milliwew baxter.milliwew at gmail.com
Wed Jul 1 11:39:09 PDT 2015


Do you think a high worker count with the current implementation of
select() would cause high memory usage ?

I'm trying to figure out why the manager always exhausts all memory:

top - 18:36:13 up 1 day, 14:42,  1 user,  load average: 12.67, 10.83, 10.95

Tasks: 606 total,   5 running, 601 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie

%Cpu(s): 15.3 us,  6.4 sy,  1.3 ni, 76.3 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.7 si,
0.0 st

KiB Mem:  65939412 total, 65251768 used,   687644 free,    43248 buffers

KiB Swap: 67076092 total, 54857880 used, 12218212 free.  4297048 cached Mem


  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+
COMMAND



35046 logstash  20   0 10.320g 511600   3784 S 782.1  0.8   5386:34 java




 9925 bro       25   5 97.504g 0.045t   1508 R  99.7 73.8 814:58.88 bro




 9906 bro       20   0 22.140g 3.388g   3784 S  73.2  5.4   1899:18 bro




 2509 root      20   0  308440  44064    784 R  48.5  0.1   1029:56
redis-server



 2688 bro       30  10    4604   1440   1144 R  44.8  0.0   0:00.49 gzip




  180 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   8.2  0.0   4:26.54
ksoftirqd/8



 2419 debug     20   0   25376   3564   2600 R   7.3  0.0   0:00.76 top




 2689 logstash  20   0       8      4      0 R   5.5  0.0   0:00.06 bro



On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 11:37 AM, Baxter Milliwew <baxter.milliwew at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Thanks.  Some limited reading says it's not possible to increase
> FD_SETSIZE on linux and it's time to migrate to poll().
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 7:44 AM, Siwek, Jon <jsiwek at illinois.edu> wrote:
>
>> A guess is that you’re bumping into an FD_SETSIZE limit — the way remote
>> I/O is currently structured has at least 5 file descriptors per remote
>> connection from what I can see at a glance (a pair of pipes, 2 fds each,
>> for signaling read/write readiness related to ChunkedIO and one fd for the
>> actual socket).  Typically, FD_SETSIZE is 1024, so with ~150-200 remote
>> connections and 5 fds per connection plus whatever other descriptors Bro
>> may need to have open (e.g. for file I/O), it seems reasonable to guess
>> that’s the problem.  But you could easily verify w/ some code modifications
>> to check whether the FD_SET call is using a fd >= FD_SETSIZE.
>>
>> Other than making involved code changes to Bro (e.g. to move away from
>> select() for I/O event handling), the only suggestions I have are 1)
>> reducing number of remote connections 2) see if you can increase FD_SETSIZE
>> via preprocessor stuff or CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS upon ./configure’ing (I’ve never
>> done this myself to know if it works, but I’ve googled around before and
>> think the implication was that it may work on Linux).
>>
>> - Jon
>>
>> > On Jun 29, 2015, at 6:22 PM, Baxter Milliwew <baxter.milliwew at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > The manager still crashes.  Interesting note about a buffer overflow.
>> >
>> >
>> > [manager]
>> >
>> > Bro 2.4
>> > Linux 3.16.0-38-generic
>> >
>> > core
>> > [New LWP 18834]
>> > [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
>> > Using host libthread_db library
>> "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
>> > Core was generated by `/usr/local/3rd-party/bro/bin/bro -U .status -p
>> broctl -p broctl-live -p local -'.
>> > Program terminated with signal SIGABRT, Aborted.
>> > #0  0x00007f163bb46cc9 in __GI_raise (sig=sig at entry=6) at
>> ../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:56
>> >
>> > Thread 1 (Thread 0x............ (LWP 18834)):
>> > #0  0x00007f163bb46cc9 in __GI_raise (sig=sig at entry=6) at
>> ../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:56
>> > #1  0x00007f163bb4a0d8 in __GI_abort () at abort.c:89
>> > #2  0x00007f163bb83394 in __libc_message (do_abort=do_abort at entry=2,
>> fmt=fmt at entry=0x............ "*** %s ***: %s terminated\n") at
>> ../sysdeps/posix/libc_fatal.c:175
>> > #3  0x00007f163bc1ac9c in __GI___fortify_fail (msg=<optimized out>,
>> msg at entry=0x............ "buffer overflow detected") at fortify_fail.c:37
>> > #4  0x00007f163bc19b60 in __GI___chk_fail () at chk_fail.c:28
>> > #5  0x00007f163bc1abe7 in __fdelt_chk (d=<optimized out>) at
>> fdelt_chk.c:25
>> > #6  0x00000000005e962a in Set (set=0x............, this=0x............)
>> at /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/iosource/FD_Set.h:59
>> > #7  SocketComm::Run (this=0x............) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/RemoteSerializer.cc:3406
>> > #8  0x00000000005e9c31 in RemoteSerializer::Fork (this=0x............)
>> at /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/RemoteSerializer.cc:687
>> > #9  0x00000000005e9d4f in RemoteSerializer::Enable
>> (this=0x............) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/RemoteSerializer.cc:575
>> > #10 0x00000000005b6943 in BifFunc::bro_enable_communication
>> (frame=<optimized out>, BiF_ARGS=<optimized out>) at bro.bif:4480
>> > #11 0x00000000005b431d in BuiltinFunc::Call (this=0x............,
>> args=0x............, parent=0x............) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Func.cc:586
>> > #12 0x0000000000599066 in CallExpr::Eval (this=0x............,
>> f=0x............) at /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Expr.cc:4544
>> > #13 0x000000000060ceb4 in ExprStmt::Exec (this=0x............,
>> f=0x............, flow=@0x............: FLOW_NEXT) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Stmt.cc:352
>> > #14 0x000000000060b174 in IfStmt::DoExec (this=0x............,
>> f=0x............, v=<optimized out>, flow=@0x............: FLOW_NEXT) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Stmt.cc:456
>> > #15 0x000000000060ced1 in ExprStmt::Exec (this=0x............,
>> f=0x............, flow=@0x............: FLOW_NEXT) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Stmt.cc:356
>> > #16 0x000000000060b211 in StmtList::Exec (this=0x............,
>> f=0x............, flow=@0x............: FLOW_NEXT) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Stmt.cc:1696
>> > #17 0x000000000060b211 in StmtList::Exec (this=0x............,
>> f=0x............, flow=@0x............: FLOW_NEXT) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Stmt.cc:1696
>> > #18 0x00000000005c042e in BroFunc::Call (this=0x............,
>> args=<optimized out>, parent=0x0) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Func.cc:403
>> > #19 0x000000000057ee2a in EventHandler::Call (this=0x............,
>> vl=0x............, no_remote=no_remote at entry=false) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/EventHandler.cc:130
>> > #20 0x000000000057e035 in Dispatch (no_remote=false,
>> this=0x............) at /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Event.h:50
>> > #21 EventMgr::Dispatch (this=this at entry=0x...... <mgr>) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Event.cc:111
>> > #22 0x000000000057e1d0 in EventMgr::Drain (this=0xbbd720 <mgr>) at
>> /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/Event.cc:128
>> > #23 0x00000000005300ed in main (argc=<optimized out>, argv=<optimized
>> out>) at /home/bro/Bro-IDS/bro-2.4/src/main.cc:1147
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 4:09 PM, Baxter Milliwew <
>> baxter.milliwew at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Nevermind... new box, default nofile limits.  Thanks for the malloc tip.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 4:03 PM, Baxter Milliwew <
>> baxter.milliwew at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Switching to jemalloc fixed the stability issue but not the worker
>> count limitation.
>> >
>> > On Sun, Jun 28, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Baxter Milliwew <
>> baxter.milliwew at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Looks like malloc from glibc, default on Ubuntu.  I will try jemalloc
>> and others.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sun, Jun 28, 2015 at 1:03 AM, Jan Grashofer <jan.grashofer at cern.ch>
>> wrote:
>> > I experienced similar problems (memory gets eaten up quickly and
>> workers crash with segfault) using tcmalloc. Which malloc do you use?
>> >
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> >
>> > Jan
>> >
>> >
>> > From: bro-bounces at bro.org [bro-bounces at bro.org] on behalf of Baxter
>> Milliwew [baxter.milliwew at gmail.com]
>> > Sent: Friday, June 26, 2015 23:03
>> > To: bro at bro.org
>> > Subject: [Bro] Bro's limitations with high worker count and memory
>> exhaustion
>> >
>> > There's some sort of association between memory exhaustion and a high
>> number of workers.  The poor man's fix would be to purchase new servers
>> with higher CPU speeds as that would reduce the worker count.  Issues with
>> high worker count and/or memory exhaustion appears to be a well know
>> problem based on the mailing list archives.
>> >
>> > In the current version of bro-2.4 my previous configuration immediately
>> causes the manager to crash: 15 proxies, 155 workers.  To resolve this I've
>> lowered the count to 10 proxies and 140 workers.  However even with this
>> configuration the manager process will exhaust all memory and crash within
>> about 2 hours.
>> >
>> > The manager is threaded; I think this is an issue with the threading
>> behavior between manager, proxies, and workers.  Debugging threading
>> problems is complex and I'm a complete novice.. my current tutorial is
>> using information from a stack overflow thread:
>> >
>> >
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/981011/c-programming-debugging-with-pthreads
>> >
>> > Does anyone else have this problem ?  What have you tried and what do
>> you suggest ?
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > 1435347409.458185       worker-2-18     parent  -       -       -
>>  info    [#10000/10.1.1.1:36994] peer sent class "control"
>> > 1435347409.458185       worker-2-18     parent  -       -       -
>>  info    [#10000/10.1.1.1:36994] phase: handshake
>> > 1435347409.661085       worker-2-18     parent  -       -       -
>>  info    [#10000/10.1.1.1:36994] request for unknown event save_results
>> > 1435347409.661085       worker-2-18     parent  -       -       -
>>  info    [#10000/10.1.1.1:36994] registered for event
>> Control::peer_status_response
>> > 1435347409.694858       worker-2-18     parent  -       -       -
>>  info    [#10000/10.1.1.1:36994] peer does not support 64bit PIDs; using
>> compatibility mode
>> > 1435347409.694858       worker-2-18     parent  -       -       -
>>  info    [#10000/10.1.1.1:36994] peer is a Broccoli
>> > 1435347409.694858       worker-2-18     parent  -       -       -
>>  info    [#10000/10.1.1.1:36994] phase: running
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Bro mailing list
>> > bro at bro-ids.org
>> > http://mailman.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/bro
>>
>>
>
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