[LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[Antonios Chalkiopoulos]

As a necessety for my job is to real-time monitor the bytes, packets, packet 
dropped etc of all the qdiscs working inside the kernel i've tried varius 
methods:

1. Parse tc -s command output and update a round robin database and use 
rrdtool to graphically display tc statistics.

[varius perl scripts exist for the above job]

2. Unsuccesfully tried QoS SNMP extensions, in order to use a new MIB to 
extract qdisc stats from.

There is also some work in the kernel level that will help reveal qdisc stats 
to userspace (thanks Thomas Graf)

To get to the point.. the perl parsing method is hackish and quick&dirty.
A proper open-source tc monitoring tool SHOULD exist ! Maybe inside iproute2 
maybe in sourceforge.

Are there any volunteers to start working on such a project? I could put 4-6 
weeks full time work on that... any suggestion for the most proper solution 
to the above problem is welcome.

Thanks,
Antonio  
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Re: [LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[Jose Luis Araujo]

Hi Antonios.

Antonios Chalkiopoulos wrote:

>As a necessety for my job is to real-time monitor the bytes, packets, packet 
>dropped etc of all the qdiscs working inside the kernel i've tried varius 
>methods:
>
>1. Parse tc -s command output and update a round robin database and use 
>rrdtool to graphically display tc statistics.
>
>  
>
I have developed myself a similar setup, but i used a perl script with 
snmp pass_persist to retrieve the data via snmp feed it to MRTG and then 
display it with a CGI script, since i changed jobs recently i made some 
changes to the setup and was thinking in creating a sourceforge project.

But i don't think it is ready for that yet, i mean, it is working 
beautifully for me (and in my previous employer) but there are some 
rough edges to address first.

Btw, the setup generates TC, iptables and MRTG configuration from a 
config file.

I think it is time to see how can the setup be improved.

>[varius perl scripts exist for the above job]
>
>2. Unsuccesfully tried QoS SNMP extensions, in order to use a new MIB to 
>extract qdisc stats from.
>
>There is also some work in the kernel level that will help reveal qdisc stats 
>to userspace (thanks Thomas Graf)
>  
>
I have never heard of this, must google it.

>To get to the point.. the perl parsing method is hackish and quick&dirty.
>A proper open-source tc monitoring tool SHOULD exist ! Maybe inside iproute2 
>maybe in sourceforge.
>  
>
I really never tried to write a better tool, with less 'tc -s' parsing, 
don't have the time or incentive to hack the needed code, so can't help 
you there :-)

>Are there any volunteers to start working on such a project? I could put 4-6 
>weeks full time work on that... any suggestion for the most proper solution 
>to the above problem is welcome.
>  
>
I can forward you the software that i use with some documentation.

>Thanks,
>Antonio  
>_______________________________________________
>LARTC mailing list / LARTC@mailman.ds9a.nl
>http://mailman.ds9a.nl/mailman/listinfo/lartc HOWTO: http://lartc.org/
>  
>

Hope it Helps

José Araújo



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Re: [LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[Jason Boxman]

On Tuesday 12 October 2004 09:32, Antonios Chalkiopoulos wrote:
> As a necessety for my job is to real-time monitor the bytes, packets,
> packet dropped etc of all the qdiscs working inside the kernel i've tried
> varius methods:
>
> 1. Parse tc -s command output and update a round robin database and use
> rrdtool to graphically display tc statistics.

I find that generally works.

> [varius perl scripts exist for the above job]
>
> 2. Unsuccesfully tried QoS SNMP extensions, in order to use a new MIB to
> extract qdisc stats from.

I was playing with that as well, but of late it doesn't seem to be actively 
developed.  Someone else mentioned LQL[1], but it doesn't seem to have hooks 
to let you grab qdisc stats yet.

[1] http://www.coverfire.com/lql/

> There is also some work in the kernel level that will help reveal qdisc
> stats to userspace (thanks Thomas Graf)

Are you talking about tcstat[2]?

[2] http://reeler.org/tcstat/index.html

> To get to the point.. the perl parsing method is hackish and quick&dirty.
> A proper open-source tc monitoring tool SHOULD exist ! Maybe inside
> iproute2 maybe in sourceforge.

LQL seems to be the only actively developed project currently that could 
eventually allow you to plug into netlink and poll for statistics.  Right now 
it seems you can only get and set parameters.

> Are there any volunteers to start working on such a project? I could put
> 4-6 weeks full time work on that... any suggestion for the most proper
> solution to the above problem is welcome.

I wrote yet another script to poll `tc` for statistics and pass that 
information off to RRDTool via Perl's RRDs module.  I am using it for 
diagnostic purposes.  It polls every 10s and updates a graph[3].

For long term tracking I am going to write a simple plugin for Munin[4] to 
grab information every five minutes and pass that off for graphing.

[3] http://edseek.com/foo.png
[4] http://www.linpro.no/projects/munin/

-- 

Jason Boxman
Perl Programmer / *NIX Systems Administrator
Shimberg Center for Affordable Housing | University of Florida
http://edseek.com/ - Linux and FOSS stuff

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Re: [LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[Dan Siemon]

On Wed, 2004-13-10 at 18:12 -0400, Jason Boxman wrote:
> I was playing with that as well, but of late it doesn't seem to be actively 
> developed.  Someone else mentioned LQL[1], but it doesn't seem to have hooks 
> to let you grab qdisc stats yet.
> 
> [1] http://www.coverfire.com/lql/

> LQL seems to be the only actively developed project currently that could 
> eventually allow you to plug into netlink and poll for statistics.  Right now 
> it seems you can only get and set parameters.

I am currently working on statistics support. These new features are not
done yet but should be within a couple of weeks. See below for a bit
more information.

http://www.coverfire.com/archives/2004/10/13/lql-update/


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Re: [LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[Antonios Chalkiopoulos]

> >As a necessety for my job is to real-time monitor the bytes, packets,
> > packet dropped etc of all the qdiscs working inside the kernel i've tried
> > varius methods:
> >
> >1. Parse tc -s command output and update a round robin database and use
> >rrdtool to graphically display tc statistics.
>

> I have developed myself a similar setup, but i used a perl script with
> snmp pass_persist to retrieve the data via snmp feed it to MRTG and then
> display it with a CGI script, since i changed jobs recently i made some
> changes to the setup and was thinking in creating a sourceforge project.

I guess you use the qos snmp extentions to achieve the above. The only 
drawback to your design is the cpu usage of cgi.

> But i don't think it is ready for that yet, i mean, it is working
> beautifully for me (and in my previous employer) but there are some
> rough edges to address first.
> I can forward you the software that i use with some documentation.

Please do so.

Thanks,
Antonio
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Re: [LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[Stef Coene]

On Thursday 14 October 2004 10:39, Antonios Chalkiopoulos wrote:
> > >As a necessety for my job is to real-time monitor the bytes, packets,
> > > packet dropped etc of all the qdiscs working inside the kernel i've
> > > tried varius methods:
> > >
> > >1. Parse tc -s command output and update a round robin database and use
> > >rrdtool to graphically display tc statistics.
> >
> > I have developed myself a similar setup, but i used a perl script with
> > snmp pass_persist to retrieve the data via snmp feed it to MRTG and then
> > display it with a CGI script, since i changed jobs recently i made some
> > changes to the setup and was thinking in creating a sourceforge project.
>
> I guess you use the qos snmp extentions to achieve the above. The only
> drawback to your design is the cpu usage of cgi.
>
> > But i don't think it is ready for that yet, i mean, it is working
> > beautifully for me (and in my previous employer) but there are some
> > rough edges to address first.
> > I can forward you the software that i use with some documentation.
>
> Please do so.
I did the same, see www.docum.org.  Most of the scripts are a mess :) but they 
work for me.
My scripts can:
- parse tc output and recreate the tc setup (parent - child relation ship)
- use snmp extension to get stats remotly
- use rrd to store the stats
- a cgi script to generate graphs on the fly
- create/edit htb + filters setup and generate commands graphical (cgi-bin 
script, 1 big hack)
- realtime graphs ina browser: written in java, but data is fetched from a 
webserver so it's not that handy
- much more that I forgot

The development of these scripts is stopped.  I'm rebuilding my house, making 
a website, I'm a father for 6 months now, ...... but if an interesting 
project is started, I want to help.

Stef

-- 
stef.coene@docum.org
 "Using Linux as bandwidth manager"
     http://www.docum.org/
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Re: [LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[Thomas Graf]

> The development of these scripts is stopped.  I'm rebuilding my house, making 
> a website, I'm a father for 6 months now, ...... but if an interesting 
> project is started, I want to help.

In order to not run into duplicated projects:

libnl
  General purpose netlink library for all netlink users with different
  API levels from raw netlink messaging to abstract processing of
  already existing netlink users. It supports a generic caching
  interface with filtering on all levels. All modules may be compiled
  in or loaded at runtime.

  Status
    netlink messaging     needs some work to handle special cases
    link                  finished and tested
    neighbour             finished and tested
    qdisc/class           nearly finished
      cbq                 nearly finished
      fifo                finished and tested
      prio                finished and tested
      sfq                 finished and tested
      ...
    filters               nearly finished
      u32                 finished and tested
      ...
    address               TLV parsers done
    route                 TLV parsers done

 The reason for not working on LQL are licensing issues not acceptable
 to me. I will release this library in 2-3 weeks and accept patches
 from that point.

bmon
  bmon is a portable bandwidth monitor running on various operating
  systems. It supports various input methods, one of those being the
  above libnl resulting in support for tc statistics. Variout output
  modes exist including an interactive curses interface:
    http://people.suug.ch/~tgr/bmon_ingress.jpg
  but also lightweight HTML output:
    http://people.suug.ch/~tgr/stats/axs.4.s.html

  Statistics may be distributed over a network using multicast
  or unicast and collected at some point to generate a summary
  of statistics for a set of nodes.

  I'm about to release 1.0-pre1 once I fixed the multicast issues
  on SunOS.

netconfig
  Cisco IOS like iproute2 replacement fully based on netlink
  supporting full tab completion and command description for those
  familiar with IOS. It is far from being releaseable as libnl
  needs to be finished first. Ideas exist to use it as interface
  for the new ietf netconf protocol.

generic netlink network statistics
  A few of may have noticed the first small set of patches going
  into 269rc3 introducing generic network statistics which will
  make the process of adding new statistics to qdiscs/class/filters
  very easy and removes the issue of backward compatibility.

netlink errors
  Effort has gone into improving error codes/messages returned
  from netlink users in the kernel. The idea is currently on hold
  as all acceptable solutions would break APIs. Planned for 2.7
  as of now.
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Re: [LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[Stephen Hemminger]

Thomas Graf wrote:

>
>netlink errors
>  Effort has gone into improving error codes/messages returned
>  from netlink users in the kernel. The idea is currently on hold
>  as all acceptable solutions would break APIs. Planned for 2.7
>  as of now.
>  
>
You probably need to come with another alternative since 2.7 probably
won't start for a long time
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Re: [LARTC] Qdisc statistics project

[Thomas Graf]

* Stephen Hemminger <416EDEE1.6000806@osdl.org> 2004-10-14 13:17
> >netlink errors
> > Effort has gone into improving error codes/messages returned
> > from netlink users in the kernel. The idea is currently on hold
> > as all acceptable solutions would break APIs. Planned for 2.7
> > as of now.
> > 
> >
> You probably need to come with another alternative since 2.7 probably
> won't start for a long time

Agreed, Jamal and myself couldn't find this alternative yet though, it was
therefore postponed to after the generic statistic conversion. Ideas
are very much appreciated.
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