----- Original Message ----
From: Karl Tatgenhorst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: jay alvarez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Jonathan Glass <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 10:24:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Flow-tools] flow-cat "20gig of flows" |flow-stat -f8 -S2 takes 
forever to complete...
> 

>    The performance of all these tools is kind of determined by the
> amount of learning and tweaking your hardware and learning the nuances
> of the software. Explore the -m option on flow-cat (disables mmap())
> this will buy much better performance. Also, always keep in mind
> everything that is going on and as you think it through you can learn
> where to optimize. Our system for flow analysis uses SAN space, a ram
> san and various other tricks. Yesterday after I wrote this post my
> coworker parsed, sorted and flow-stat'd 61 GBs of flows. The operation
> took just over 13 minutes.

Wow, that was impressive! The only thing on my mind was using 64 bit OS so I 
can use plenty of RAM.. But that was just a dream... My boss wants immediate 
output but he wouldn't allow me to buy such expensive toys for my netflow lab.. 
Not sure about that SAN space, I will try googling for it. Also that mmap 
thing...

Great! thanks for the tips.

Right now I just decided to flow-cat 1 week of flows (around 5-8gig) and then 
sorted flow-stat it.
Sadly, It runs for about 30-40 minutes. Well, better than no output at all..

Thanks again!
-jay




On Wed, 2007-01-10 at 15:30 -0800, jay alvarez wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Karl Tatgenhorst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Jonathan Glass <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: jay alvarez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [email protected]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 10:53:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [Flow-tools] flow-cat "20gig of flows" |flow-stat -f8 -S2 takes 
> forever to complete...
> 
> 
>   Hi,
> 
> >   Not sure about your hardwares specs but here are some tips.
> 
> # cat /proc/version
> Linux version 2.6.8-2-386 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) (gcc version 3.3.5 (Debian 
> 1:3.3.5-13)) #1 Tue Aug 16 12:46:35 UTC 2005
> 
> Intel Xeon 3.00Ghz with 1 gig ram and lots of hd space (200gb).
> 
> 
> >  First, the file size is unbelievably unwieldy. You are most likely
> >  looking at only certain types of traffic (and if not perhaps you should
> >  consider breaking it out by traffic type) why not rewrite the files in
> >  that way. Let us say for example that ICMP is not important and flows
> >  with less than 3 pkts (not a full tcp handshake). I bet this would cut a
> >  sizable percentage out of your files.
> 
> The goal is to have an output of Top destination ip (using flow-stat) then 
> parse it using custom scripts to agreggate all IPs belonging to a particular 
> country.. Sort of finding out the top destination countries for the month so 
> that the network guys can do all their routing trick...
> 
> 
> 
> >  Next, flow-stat needs flow-cat to finish entirely in memory before it
> >  can build the hashes. This means that you need 20 GBS worth of memory
> >  used PRIOR to flow-stat building the hashes. 
> 
> I see... so I guess I'll have to limit my flow-cat to 1 or less Gb of flows 
> or make use of the extra 2Gb swap just for the flow-stat to function 
> smoothly..
> 
> > This is a difficult trick
> >  since Debian would need to be specially tuned to use 3GB (2GB is the
> >  usual max 3 is high end). To accomplish this you would need 20GBs
> >  minimum of swap space and that would need to be physically on a drive
> >  other than the drive holding the flow files or you will just be i/o
> >  bound. Why not cat together single weeks of traffic (with the above
> >  mentioned edits) and then put them in excel to create the monthly
> >  reports?
> 
> 1st day flow totals to 750Mb.. And adding the 2nd day equals 1.6 gb. I guess 
> this would still be tolerable considering I am planning to use the swap space.
> 
> So what now? I mean, is it ok if I just "flow-cat 2_days_of_flows" flow-cat 
> another 2 days and so on. Then I will flow-cat each output all together then 
> throw it to flow-stat? hmm... this is getting trickier... I guess it would 
> really be impossible to do a "flow-cat 20gb_flows |flow-stat -f8", even if I 
> remove sorting, right?
> 
> I haven't tried flow-cat'ing a week of flows yet.. and given 750mb per 1day 
> flow, it would roughly be around 5 to 6 gb.. Will it be ok if I flow-cat 
> |flow-stat -f8 -S2 this size considering my current hardware specs? Or should 
> I just show them the top destination countries for every two days, 
> then aggregate them as needed?
> 
> Or you have any other suggestion?
> 
> I see, perhaps this is why Flowviewer is taking too long when showing flow 
> reports for a long span of time. I wonder if Flowviewer guys have already 
> considered this. No wonder why other admins here said they have left 
> flowviewer because it takes forever to complete a month of report.
> 
> 
> Thanks.
> -jay
> 
> >     The tip on lsof -p <pid> very cool, just thought I would mention
> >  that. Thanks.
> 
> Karl Tatgenhorst
> 
> On Wed, 2007-01-10 at 09:28 -0500, Jonathan Glass wrote:
> > jay alvarez wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > I have a directory of flow-captured flows for a whole month(Dec2006) and
> > > I'm trying to do a
> > > flow-cat "flows_dir" | flowstat -f8 -S2 > topdestination
> > > 
> > > I left it in background and it's been running for 30 hours now.
> > > Doing a "top" shows flow-stat being on top of the list from time to time
> > > consuming around 60% of memory on a debian system. Noticeably, flow-cat
> > > doesn't appear in "top" (perhaps it's done with its job)
> > > 
> > > however ps shows them both.
> > > 
> > > #ps -aux |grep flow
> > > 
> > > root     22604  0.9  0.0  6448  284 ?        S    Jan09  16:31 flow-cat
> > > /var/netflow/ft/all/dec2006/
> > > root     22605  7.0 52.3 875204 474452 ?     D    Jan09 123:07 flow-stat
> > > -f8 -S2
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Also lsof
> > > 
> > > # lsof |grep flow-cat
> > > 
> > > flow-cat  22604     root  cwd       DIR        8,3      224      36536
> > > flow-cat  22604     root  rtd       DIR        8,4      584          2 /
> > > flow-cat  22604     root  txt       REG        8,3    88716      25290
> > > /usr/bin/flow-cat
> > > flow-cat  22604     root  mem       REG        8,4    90248        110
> > > /lib/ld-2.3.2.so
> > > flow-cat  22604     root  mem       REG        8,4    73304       5891
> > > /lib/tls/libnsl-2.3.2.so
> > > flow-cat  22604     root  mem       REG        8,4    28880       6019
> > > /lib/libwrap.so.0.7.6
> > > flow-cat  22604     root  mem       REG        8,3    67468       5598
> > > /usr/lib/libz.so.1.2.2
> > > flow-cat  22604     root  mem       REG        8,4  1254660       5886
> > > /lib/tls/libc-2.3.2.so
> > > flow-cat  22604     root  mem       REG        8,1  3548008      48872
> > > /var/netflow/ft/all/dec2006/ft-v05.2006-12-21.133000+0800
> > > flow-cat  22604     root    0u      CHR      136,0                   2
> > > /dev/pts/0 (deleted)
> > > flow-cat  22604     root    1w     FIFO        0,7            12005820 
> > > pipe
> > > flow-cat  22604     root    2u      CHR      136,0                   2
> > > /dev/pts/0 (deleted)
> > > flow-cat  22604     root    3r      REG        8,1  3548008      48872
> > > /var/netflow/ft/all/dec2006/ft-v05.2006-12-21.133000+0800
> > > 
> > > Above shows flow-cat seems to have stopped processing at Dec 21, don't
> > > know why.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > # lsof |grep flow-stat
> > > 
> > > flow-stat 22605     root  cwd       DIR        8,3      224      36536
> > > /usr/local/home/jayson/topcountries
> > > flow-stat 22605     root  rtd       DIR        8,4      584          2 /
> > > flow-stat 22605     root  txt       REG        8,3   130208      25291
> > > /usr/bin/flow-stat
> > > flow-stat 22605     root  mem       REG        8,4    90248        110
> > > /lib/ld-2.3.2.so
> > > flow-stat 22605     root  mem       REG        8,4    73304       5891
> > > /lib/tls/libnsl-2.3.2.so
> > > flow-stat 22605     root  mem       REG        8,4    28880       6019
> > > /lib/libwrap.so.0.7.6
> > > flow-stat 22605     root  mem       REG        8,3    67468       5598
> > > /usr/lib/libz.so.1.2.2
> > > flow-stat 22605     root  mem       REG        8,4  1254660       5886
> > > /lib/tls/libc-2.3.2.so
> > > flow-stat 22605     root    0r     FIFO        0,7            12005820 
> > > pipe
> > > flow-stat 22605     root    1w      REG        8,3        0      36353
> > > /usr/local/home/jayson/topcountries/topdestinationip
> > > flow-stat 22605     root    2u      CHR      136,0                   2
> > > /dev/pts/0 (deleted)
> > > 
> > > As you can see above, I have redirected the output to "topdestinatioip"
> > > But up to now, the file is still empty.
> > > 
> > > Do you know am I going to find out the progress of what I'm doing?
> > > I'm just afraid that the program might have stopped running and I am
> > > waiting for nothing now.
> > > 
> > > Thanks
> > > - jay
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.
> > > <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=41244/*http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index>
> > > 
> > > 
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Flow-tools mailing list
> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > http://mailman.splintered.net/mailman/listinfo/flow-tools
> > 
> > Just as a personal preference, I like to start my flow-cat sessions in
> > the background, find their process id, and watch it. Literally:
> > 
> > flow-cat &
> > ps -aef|grep flow-cat
> > watch "lsof -p <flow-cat-pid>"
> > 
> > So I can see exactly what files flow-cat is processing, and watch for it
> > to die.
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Cheap talk?
> Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates.
> http://voice.yahoo.com






 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Access over 1 million songs.
http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited
_______________________________________________
Flow-tools mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mailman.splintered.net/mailman/listinfo/flow-tools

Reply via email to