[Bro] Memory Issue with Bro

Mark Buchanan mabuchan at gmail.com
Mon Sep 28 13:27:42 PDT 2015


Sampada,

I've observed Bro utilizing more memory when PF_RING modules haven't been
recompiled for the newest kernel.  Once I recompiled for the current
kernel, my memory usage got more inline with the numbers I would expect to
see.  Could that be a problem for you or is PF_RING not in the equation?

Mark

On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 2:59 PM, Sampada Kathare <skathare at solarflare.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
>
>
> I have been using the Bro 2.4 to test the performance of SFC driver. I
> have observed the following issue because of which I am unable to proceed
> with any analysis -
>
>
>
> There seems to be a memory leak somewhere as there are times when Bro runs
> out of memory too soon. These are the instances when drops are also seen
> too soon even at very low packet rates.
>
> When Bro is started, the available free memory keeps going down till a
> point where the server is extremely sluggish and there are drops being seen
>>
>
>
> *An instance of Bro running out of memory (with 16 workers, no cpu pinning
> and having sent 155K pps for 7-8 minutes)–*
>
> [root at dellr620c skathare]# free -m
>
>              total       used       *free*     shared    buffers
> cached
>
> Mem:         32129      31917        *211*          3          1
> 376      *à** 211MB : that’s very low, considering the system started
> with some 26GB free memory (and this drop happens just within the first 2
> minutes of running the      traffic). System becomes very slow at this
> point and, of course, it has started dropping packets already.*
>
> -/+ buffers/cache:      31539        589
>
> Swap:         1907       1687        219
>
> [root at dellr620c skathare]#
>
>
>
> Swap:         1907       1764        142
>
>
>
>
>
> [root at dellr620c skathare]# cat /proc/meminfo
>
> MemTotal:       32900200 kB
>
> *MemFree:          193384 kB*
>
> *MemAvailable:     480956 kB*
>
> Buffers:            2464 kB
>
> Cached:           471260 kB
>
> SwapCached:        74860 kB
>
> Active:         23439908 kB
>
> Inactive:        3120012 kB
>
> Active(anon):   23179296 kB
>
> Inactive(anon):  2914628 kB
>
> Active(file):     260612 kB
>
> Inactive(file):   205384 kB
>
> Unevictable:           0 kB
>
> Mlocked:               0 kB
>
> SwapTotal:       1953076 kB
>
> SwapFree:         152264 kB
>
> Dirty:             22548 kB
>
> Writeback:             8 kB
>
> AnonPages:      26017216 kB
>
> Mapped:            15200 kB
>
> Shmem:              4692 kB
>
> Slab:             190556 kB
>
> SReclaimable:      93648 kB
>
> SUnreclaim:        96908 kB
>
> KernelStack:        4288 kB
>
> PageTables:        71380 kB
>
> NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
>
> Bounce:                0 kB
>
> WritebackTmp:          0 kB
>
> CommitLimit:    15638376 kB
>
> Committed_AS:   29119672 kB
>
> VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
>
> VmallocUsed:      374920 kB
>
> VmallocChunk:   34342144308 kB
>
> HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
>
> AnonHugePages:    243712 kB
>
> HugePages_Total:    2700
>
> HugePages_Free:       46
>
> HugePages_Rsvd:        0
>
> HugePages_Surp:        0
>
> Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
>
> DirectMap4k:      345024 kB
>
> DirectMap2M:    18483200 kB
>
> DirectMap1G:    16777216 kB
>
>
>
>
>
> [root at dellr620c skathare]#top
>
>
>
> top - 22:48:06 up 70 days, 19:43,  5 users,  load average: 18.25, 13.49,
> 10.04
>
> Tasks:*  17 *total,*   1 *running,*  16 *sleeping,*   0 *stopped,*   0 *
> zombie
>
> %Cpu(s):* 31.5 *us,*  2.9 *sy,*  0.7 *ni,* 43.7 *id,* 21.1 *wa,*  0.0 *
> hi,*  0.0 *si,*  0.0 *st
>
> KiB Mem: * 32900200 *total,* 32731868 *used,*   168332 free*,*      336 *
> buffers
>
> KiB Swap:*  1953076 *total,*  1262956 *used,*   690120 *free.*    14248
> cached Mem*
>
>
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+
> COMMAND                                                  P
>
> 20504 root      20   0  404644  32724   1464 D   0.0  0.1   6:32.62
> bro                                                     31
>
> 20552 root      20   0  404692  50108   1496 D  52.1  0.2   6:37.18
> bro                                                     29
>
> 20564 root      20   0  404824  50960   1508 D  49.8  0.2   6:37.16
> bro                                                     27
>
> 20574 root      20   0  404652  48748   1476 D  52.0  0.1   6:36.52
> bro                                                     24
>
> 20567 root      20   0  404684  49948   1456 D   0.0  0.2   6:33.32
> bro                                                     23
>
> 20561 root      20   0  421440  66672   1412 D  51.9  0.2   6:37.14
> bro                                                     18
>
> 20569 root      20   0  404708  31904   1508 D  41.1  0.1   6:34.77
> bro                                                     16
>
> 20495 root      20   0  404620  49936   1408 D  27.1  0.2   6:34.91
> bro                                                     13
>
> 20515 root      20   0  404684  46324   1500 D  21.9  0.1   6:33.25
> bro                                                     13
>
> 20548 root      20   0  404704  50188   1504 D  43.6  0.2   6:35.16
> bro                                                     13
>
> 20474 root      20   0  404736  32704   1508 D   0.0  0.1   6:32.79
> bro                                                     12
>
> 20502 root      20   0  404636  29300   1464 D  52.0  0.1   6:36.13
> bro                                                     12
>
> 20539 root      20   0  404748  32784   1484 D  44.7  0.1   6:34.08
> bro                                                     11
>
> 20537 root      20   0  404668  29284   1464 D   0.0  0.1   6:32.03
> bro                                                      4
>
> *20559 root      20   0  404684  32644   1444 R  54.6  0.1   6:38.12
> bro                                                      3*
>
> 20542 root      20   0  404728  32704   1504 D  25.1  0.1   6:33.84
> bro                                                      1
>
> 20289 root      20   0  196768    412    412 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.03
> solar_clusterd                                           0
>
>
>
>
>
> *After stopping the BRO workers (especially after the manager is
> killed/stopped), memory recovers –*
>
>
>
> top - 22:53:01 up 70 days, 19:48,  5 users,  load average: 3.06, 8.83, 9.20
>
> Tasks:*   1 *total,*   0 *running,*   1 *sleeping,*   0 *stopped,*   0 *
> zombie
>
> %Cpu(s):*  0.1 *us,*  0.3 *sy,*  2.2 *ni,* 96.6 *id,*  0.8 *wa,*  0.0 *
> hi,*  0.0 *si,*  0.0 *st
>
> KiB Mem: * 32900200 *total,*  6702252 *used,* 26197948 free*,*     8308 *buffers
> *à** This is almost what the system originally started with – 26GB*
>
> KiB Swap:*  1953076 *total,*   237216 *used,*  1715860 *free.*   528032
> cached Mem*
>
>
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+
> COMMAND                                                  P
>
> 20289 root      20   0  196768   1028    484 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.03
> solar_clusterd
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> At very high packet rates, the available free memory keeps going down very
> fast and starts dropping packets. At lower packet rates, the drop in
> available free memory is comparatively slower, but it is still there and
> packets are dropped eventually. When the BRO workers are stopped, the
> available free memory recovers. During the few successful times when I have
> been able to go till 150Kpps without seeing any packet drops, the available
> free memory remained a constant at  ~23G. It remained at this for the
> entire duration of the test (more than an hour ) and no drops were seen.
>
>
>
> The above data is a few days old. When I tried running BRO again today, I
> saw the memory drop from 18G to 4G in just a matter of few seconds after
> starting BRO (16 workers, each pinned to a CPU). Is it possible that Bro is
> accumulating some per-flow state and not freeing it? If so, is there any
> tuning that should be done to avoid this?
>
>
>
> Appreciate any help on this!
>
>
>
> -
>
> Sampada
> The information contained in this message is confidential and is intended
> for the addressee(s) only. If you have received this message in error,
> please notify the sender immediately and delete the message. Unless you are
> an addressee (or authorized to receive for an addressee), you may not use,
> copy or disclose to anyone this message or any information contained in
> this message. The unauthorized use, disclosure, copying or alteration of
> this message is strictly prohibited.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bro mailing list
> bro at bro-ids.org
> http://mailman.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/bro
>



-- 
Mark Buchanan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU/pipermail/bro/attachments/20150928/ac8139d6/attachment-0001.html 


More information about the Bro mailing list