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    SNORT - Snort 2.9.2.3 pkg v. 2.2.1 process do not quit via update scripts or GUI

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved pfSense Packages
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    • J Offline
      judex
      last edited by

      Hey Breusshe!

      Thx for your investigations. Did you also add the rc_stop statement in snort.inc before line 937? This generates working snort.sh for me. Logic bug or not - at leats it works. Stock installation gives no errors in log. You just get two instances.

      Greets, Judex

      2.1-RELEASE (amd64)
      built on Wed Sep 11 18:17:48 EDT 2013
      FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p11

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      • B Offline
        breusshe
        last edited by

        Here is restart:

        
        /usr/local/etc/rc.d(60): ./snort.sh restart                
        inside rc_start()                                                                                             
        inside rc_stop()                                                                                              
        Spawning daemon child...                                                                                      
        My daemon child 45455 lives...                                                                                
        Daemon parent exiting (0)                                                                                     
        Spawning daemon child...                                                                                      
        My daemon child 45983 lives...                                                                                
        Daemon parent exiting (0)
        
        

        The inside rc_start() and inside rc_stop() are echo tags I put into the snort.sh file so I could see when pid file does not exist errors were occurring.  My current iteration of snort.sh does not throw such errors any longer.

        and here is pgrep showing how many are now running:

        
        /usr/local/etc/rc.d(61): pgrep snort
        45983
        45455
        
        
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        • B Offline
          breusshe
          last edited by

          @Judex:

          Yeah, I put that in with my first round of corrections.  But, after seeing Ermal's post and checking things out, I've revised my suggested fix.  See the long post I put up a few minutes ago.

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          • J Offline
            judex
            last edited by

            @ermal:

            Install stock 2.2.2 and give me syslog errors on what is happening!
            Or run snort.sh from ssh session manually specifying restart and post it here.

            I run "snort.sh restart" with stock snort.sh. Before one pid, after two pids:

            
            [2.0.1-RELEASE][root@gatekeeper.me.local]/root(27): pgrep snort
            57551
            [2.0.1-RELEASE][root@gatekeeper.me.local]/root(28): /usr/local/etc/rc.d/snort.sh restart
            Spawning daemon child...
            My daemon child 11345 lives...
            Daemon parent exiting (0)
            [2.0.1-RELEASE][root@gatekeeper.me.local]/root(29): pgrep snort
            11345
            57551
            
            

            Sorry for the redundant information. Breusshe was faster…

            2.1-RELEASE (amd64)
            built on Wed Sep 11 18:17:48 EDT 2013
            FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p11

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            • B Offline
              breusshe
              last edited by

              No, that's great, Judex.  It shows stock isn't working, but my is.  Now the problem can be fixed.

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              • D Offline
                dwood
                last edited by

                Uninstalling vs 2.2.1 and installing 2.2.2 worked for me (just now).  Snort can be stopped now, and pgrep snort shows only 1 instance per interface when started.  Blocked IPs when the interface shows stopped issue also addressed.

                Thx :-)

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                • S Offline
                  SectorNine50
                  last edited by

                  I've also found that I had two instances of snort running after the update.

                  I'm not sure if it happened immediately or not, but I noticed today that my RAM and SWAP usage was way up, so I checked top and noticed both the instances.

                  I also noticed that pressing the stop button in the services window did not stop both snort services, however, pressing stop on the specific interface did successfully stop one of them.

                  Not sure if this helps or not.

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                  • B Offline
                    breusshe
                    last edited by

                    Okay, for the third time, I've posted fixes for the snort restart problem to the repository.  Here is the pull request:

                    https://github.com/bsdperimeter/pfsense-packages/pull/278

                    Hopefully someone will actually try these changes out before stating they will not fix the problem and closing the pull request.

                    Here's to hope!

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                    • E Offline
                      eri--
                      last edited by

                      Ok fixed and found the issue why your suggestion of != 0 was seemingly working for you.
                      Check the new commit i made that fixes the issue/bug in the rc script.

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                      • B Offline
                        breusshe
                        last edited by

                        @ermal:

                        Ok fixed and found the issue why your suggestion of != 0 was seemingly working for you.
                        Check the new commit i made that fixes the issue/bug in the rc script.

                        Thanks, Ermal.  I re-installed snort and re-saved an instance to update the snort.sh file.  Your solution works, with two minor hitches.  See the below output from top:

                        1st Trial:

                        
                        Mem: 950M Active, 107M Inact, 336M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2524M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        59839 root          2  44    0   928M   613M nanslp  0   0:00  0.00% snort
                        23711 root          2  44    0   616M   301M nanslp  0   0:00  0.00% snort
                        
                        Mem: 979M Active, 305M Inact, 339M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2294M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        59839 root          2  44    0  1056M   731M nanslp  0   1:27  0.00% snort
                        23711 root          2  44    0   738M   411M nanslp  1   0:29  0.00% snort
                        
                        Mem: 409M Active, 280M Inact, 334M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2893M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        
                        23711 root          2  44    0   876M   543M nanslp  0   0:57  0.00% snort
                        
                        

                        2nd Trial:

                        
                        Mem: 945M Active, 112M Inact, 336M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2523M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        29717 root          2  44    0   928M   614M nanslp  2   0:04 20.65% snort
                        31324 root          2  45    0   616M   300M nanslp  2   0:02 70.61% snort
                        
                        Mem: 975M Active, 312M Inact, 339M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2290M Free        
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        29717 root          2  44    0  1050M   726M nanslp  2   1:54 10.89% snort
                        31324 root          2  44    0   746M   420M nanslp  0   0:55 10.25% snort
                        
                        Mem: 413M Active, 276M Inact, 334M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2894M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        
                        31324 root          2  44    0   874M   542M nanslp  0   1:44  3.96% snort
                        
                        

                        3rd trial:

                        
                        Mem: 948M Active, 109M Inact, 336M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2523M Free        
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        44906 root          2  44    0   616M   300M nanslp  0   0:05 15.58% snort
                        43256 root          2  44    0   928M   614M nanslp  1   0:05  9.18% snort
                        
                        Mem: 985M Active, 317M Inact, 339M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2276M Free        
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        43256 root          2  44    0  1058M   734M nanslp  2   1:48  5.76% snort
                        44906 root          2  44    0   752M   426M nanslp  0   0:52  5.57% snort
                        
                        Mem: 414M Active, 294M Inact, 335M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2874M Free        
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        
                        44906 root          2  44    0   894M   561M nanslp  0   1:39  0.68% snort
                        
                        

                        The above are three trial runs where I just kept issuing the command snort.sh restart, each trial only has three restarts.  I then had to issue snort.sh stop because, as you can see in the 3rd run of each trial, one of my snort instances does not restart.  That is when I began the next trial.

                        As you can see, the snort instances use more memory between each successive runs of the snort.sh script.  That makes sense to me since -HUP doesn't kill the process, it only refreshes it, mapping changes to new segments of memory.  The problem is that many folks use systems with limited resources.  As each update to the snort rules happens, a little more memory is lost to HUP.  Eventually, all the resources are used up.  That means admins need to watch Snort to make sure it isn't hitting that limit.  However, this might not be an issue since, as I mentioned, one of my snort instances will not survive the 3rd restart.  It is a consistent behavior.  On the 3rd restart of snort, an instance of snort does not recover.  I then removed -HUP from snort.sh and modified the if-else statement it was in into just an if-statement.  The contents of the else-statement were moved outside of the if-statement.  Here is the modified code:

                        
                        if [ $? = 0 ]; then
                                /bin/pkill -F /var/run/snort_re027549.pid -a
                                                /usr/bin/logger -p daemon.info -i -t SnortStartup "Snort SOFT START For Block Only Rules(27549_re0)..."
                        fi
                               # Start snort and barnyard2
                                /bin/rm /var/run/snort_re027549.pid
                                        /usr/local/bin/snort -R 27549 -D -q -l /var/log/snort/snort_re027549 --pid-path /var/run --nolock-pidfile -G 27549 -c /usr/local/etc/snort/snort_27549_re0/snort.conf -i re0
                                        /usr/bin/logger -p daemon.info -i -t SnortStartup "Snort START For Block Only Rules(27549_re0)..."
                        
                        

                        I then started repeating my trials.  Only got one trial, but it has six restarts in it.  Both snort instances come back with each restart and memory usage is consistent across all restarts.

                        Removed -HUP, new trials:

                        
                        Mem: 951M Active, 107M Inact, 336M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2523M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        15636 root          2  44    0   616M   300M nanslp  2   0:13  1.95% snort
                        52030 root          2  44    0   928M   614M nanslp  2   0:13  1.95% snort
                        
                        Mem: 946M Active, 111M Inact, 336M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2524M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        12265 root          2  44    0   928M   614M nanslp  2   0:00  0.29% snort
                        41341 root          2  44    0   616M   300M nanslp  2   0:00  0.29% snort
                        
                        Mem: 949M Active, 109M Inact, 336M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2523M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        24100 root          2  47    0   616M   300M nanslp  2   0:01 92.82% snort
                        61007 root          2  44    0   928M   614M nanslp  0   0:01 14.65% snort
                        
                        Mem: 950M Active, 108M Inact, 336M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2523M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        42501 root          2  44    0   616M   300M nanslp  2   0:03 43.46% snort
                        12811 root          2  44    0   928M   614M nanslp  2   0:05 19.78% snort
                        
                        Mem: 952M Active, 106M Inact, 336M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2522M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        36328 root          2  45    0   616M   301M nanslp  2   0:01 71.44% snort
                        34615 root          2  44    0   928M   614M nanslp  1   0:03 18.95% snort
                        
                        Mem: 950M Active, 108M Inact, 336M Wired, 4K Cache, 248M Buf, 2523M Free
                          PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
                        17614 root          2  44    0   616M   300M nanslp  0   0:03 43.65% snort
                        15390 root          2  44    0   928M   614M nanslp  0   0:05 19.34% snort
                        
                        

                        I'm suggesting that the -HUP be removed from snort.inc so it does not, at the very least, hinder performance for limited resource users.  I know this means that when a snort restart happens, it will also mean the system isn't protected by snort for a few minutes.  However, I believe snort dying after a restart will also be prevented with other users.  I'm not saying at least one snort instance will die on the third restart, but I do assert that snort will die after some number of restarts and, for a given system, will be consistent.  I've posted a patch for proposed patch to snort.inc, unless you can see a better solution than mine:

                        https://github.com/bsdperimeter/pfsense-packages/pull/281

                        Maybe a better solution would be to add a new setting to the global settings, a checkbox that allows the user to determine if they want to use -HUP or not.  Then they can look at their environment and decide which is better for them:  a steady creep of resource loss or not being unprotected for a few minutes.  Depending on that setting, either the code as it stands in the repository is used, or something similar to the code I'm proposing.

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                        • E Offline
                          eri--
                          last edited by

                          I think that time is a factor here with your snort.sh.
                          A service like snort needs its time to prepare itself for releasing and allocating new resources from a HUP so you have to take that into consideration.

                          Furthermore i would be expecting a system log associated with that.

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                          • B Offline
                            breusshe
                            last edited by

                            @ermal:

                            I think that time is a factor here with your snort.sh.
                            A service like snort needs its time to prepare itself for releasing and allocating new resources from a HUP so you have to take that into consideration.

                            Furthermore i would be expecting a system log associated with that.

                            How much time?  will that result in the memory usage dropping back down closer to it's original levels?

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