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    Something taking up all the space on my system

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • T
      Troutpocket @stephenw10
      last edited by

      @stephenw10

      Here's the last 48 hours. It gracefully fills up until about 30% then there's this weird jaggy thing. Maybe syslog is attempting to trim logs?

      The graph goes back to zero when it's 100% full probably because it can't send telegraf data to the logger any more. Then I reboot and fsck and we start again. This trend goes back at least month. I don't keep logs like this longer so I'm not sure when it started.

      alt text

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        How are you pulling that data? I assume it lines up with the output from df at that time?

        It's not something I've seen locally where there was no obvious process filling the filesystem.

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        • T
          Troutpocket @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10

          Telegraf dumps timeseries data from the pfsense firewall to a separate "logger" system (influxdb). It's not stored locally. We do this on 50+ pfsense firewalls and it's not happening anywhere else. I've been comparing configs across multiple sites and they're all nearly identical. I bang these out a few times each month.

          I guess at this point it has become an academic curiosity for me more than anything else. I can fail over to the other half of the HA pair (yay CARP!).

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          • S
            SteveITS Galactic Empire @Troutpocket
            last edited by

            @troutpocket it’s HA? Does it happen on the backup if you make that master?

            Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
            When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
            Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

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            • T
              Troutpocket @SteveITS
              last edited by

              @steveits
              Nope!

              I think I tracked something down... I decided to stop Suricata and see what happens. I watched the graph for a bit and the disk space usage leveled out.

              The graph stopped going up when I stopped Suricata. Dropped like off a cliff when I uninstalled it. Remained level after that.

              alt text

              It's like the suricata logs are growing at a normal rate (and truncating at 5GB as configured), but the filesystem thinks they're still growing.

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              • S
                SteveITS Galactic Empire @Troutpocket
                last edited by

                @troutpocket but if it doesn’t happen on the backup, I’d think it’s therefore not a configuration issue?

                Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
                When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
                Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

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                • T
                  Troutpocket @SteveITS
                  last edited by

                  @steveits

                  I blew away suricata and reinstalled/reconfigured it. I'm watching the system closely and will report back in 24 hrs.

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                  • T
                    Troutpocket @Troutpocket
                    last edited by

                    @troutpocket

                    So far so good. Looks like something about suricata was causing this weird invisible filesystem creep.

                    bmeeksB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • bmeeksB
                      bmeeks @Troutpocket
                      last edited by bmeeks

                      @troutpocket said in Something taking up all the space on my system:

                      @troutpocket

                      So far so good. Looks like something about suricata was causing this weird invisible filesystem creep.

                      Probably a zombie Suricata process. Certain combinations of unusual events can result in more than one Suricata instance running on the same interface. That leads to weird troubles. One of those could easily have been a stuck "open" invisible log file.

                      In the future, to see if duplicate Suricata processes are running, execute this command from a CLI prompt (directly on the console or via SSH):

                      ps -ax | grep suricata
                      

                      You should see only one Suricata process ID (PID) per interface. If you see duplicate entries listed, you will need to kill them. Best to stop all instances using the GUI on the INTERFACES tab in Suricata, then run that CLI command again and manually kill any remaining process IDs. Then return to the INTERFACES tab in the GUI and start Suricata again on the configured interfaces.

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                      • T
                        Troutpocket @bmeeks
                        last edited by

                        @bmeeks
                        Even after rebooting the firewall?

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                        • bmeeksB
                          bmeeks @Troutpocket
                          last edited by bmeeks

                          @troutpocket said in Something taking up all the space on my system:

                          @bmeeks
                          Even after rebooting the firewall?

                          Rebooting will kill any zombie process, so no need to perform the CLI command if you reboot. If you had space continuing to disappear AFTER rebooting, then I am inclined to think Suricata may not have been the issue. It starts with a clean slate after a reboot.

                          Reading your entire thread again, perhaps the log file itself got hosed within the OS. Suricata will reopen the same log file when restarted or after rebooting. But blowing it away and reinstalling would wipe out the log file.

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