Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 8 Dec 2005 10:55:55 +0200
From:      "Imri Zvik" <imriz@co.zahav.net.il>
To:        <j_guojun@lbl.gov>
Cc:        freebsd-performance@freebsd.org
Subject:   RE: very busy syslog server
Message-ID:  <A6E1736261841F40B12286B0D04B194503CE7A83@IGMAIL.InetGold>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi,

1. The NIC being used is "Intel(R) PRO/1000" (the em(4) driver).
2. The CPU utilization in average is between 15% and 20%.
3. This machine is being used _only_ for the sysloging - the database =
resides on another server.

Meanwhile, I have added some more memory to the machine, and now it has =
3GB of RAM, but I am still seeing packets being dropped due to full =
socket buffers.

Thanks,

--
Imri Zvik
PGP (2.6.3ia) Public Key: http://mariska.inter.net.il/~imriz/imriz.pgp
=A0
________________________________________
From: Jin Guojun [mailto:jinmtb@sbcglobal.net]=20
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 9:56 PM
To: Sean Chittenden
Cc: Imri Zvik; freebsd-performance@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: very busy syslog server

Sean Chittenden wrote:=20
I'm trying to setup a syslog server to serve a large group of
servers.  For the syslog daemon, I have chosen rsyslogd, and the
backend is mysql (on a different machine).

The machine has 2 Intel Xeon 2.80GHz CPUs, and 1GB of RAM, and it is
running FreeBSD 6 (6.0-STABLE).

The problem is, that I see a lot of UDP packets being dropped:

udp:
        390202 datagrams received
        0 with incomplete header
        0 with bad data length field
        0 with bad checksum
        6 with no checksum
        0 dropped due to no socket
        0 broadcast/multicast datagrams dropped due to no socket
->>>    123677 dropped due to full socket buffers
        0 not for hashed pcb
        266525 delivered
        133260 datagrams output

I have tried to increase net.inet.udp.recvspace, but it didn't solve
the problem.

I would appreciate any hint or tips.
   =20

When you're doing a large number of packets per second, you may want
to look into enabling device polling(4).  Right now, every packet
results in an interrupt.  With device polling, you can handle more
than one packet per interrupt.  See the man page for details.=20
Not quite, the interrupt interval depends on the device driver, or which =
NIC is used.
A number NICs are able to to interrupt coalescence, which requires to =
increase buffer
descriptor ring size (just for receiving buffer descriptors). Of course, =
polling is a simple thing
to try.

Before we can come up a better way to alter a better solution for this =
case, you also need to
monitor a few things:

What is NIC on this machine?

What is the CUP utilization in average and in case the packet drops? You =
can simply write a
script to do this instead of instructing kernel to do so (since this =
needs no super accurate):

run vmstat to record CPU utilization in every 1 to 3 seconds for use =
when following event happens:
use netstat watch UDP and pipe it to awk "netstat -udp | awk =
'$2=3D=3D"drooped" {print $1; exit}'"
every 3-5 seconds, and compare the result with previous one to see if =
any changes. If so,
grep the last couple of line from vmstat output records.

>From your information, it seems that this machine has enough memory =
bandwidth for syslog needs,
since it is not clear what this machine is for rlog daemon or sql =
server, or both are on the same machine.
If the third case is true, then you may run out of memory bandwidth. =
Under this circumstance,
you need to obtain the packet rate and the average packet size in order =
to determine the I/O
and memory bandwidth requirements.

=A0=A0=A0 -Jin Guojun



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?A6E1736261841F40B12286B0D04B194503CE7A83>