Re: Enable syn cookies by default

[Olaf van der Spek <olafvdspek@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 9:25 AM, Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com> wrote:
> Olaf van der Spek a écrit :
>> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Olaf van der Spek
>> <olafvdspek@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Olaf van der Spek <olafvdspek@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I'm forwarding Debian feature request #520668.
>>>>
>>>> Could syn cookies be enabled by default?
>>>>
>>>> AFAIK syn cookies only get send when the half-open TCP connection
>>>> queue is full. So stuff like window scaling should work fine in normal
>>>> situations.
>>>>
>>>> Speaking of which:
>>>> When the half-open TCP connection queue is full and syn cookies are
>>>> enabled, you get a message like "kernel: possible SYN flooding on port
>>>> 2710. Sending cookies."
>>>> However when syn cookies are disabled, you don't get any message (in
>>>> kern.log), although connections to your server are timing out.
>>>> Could such a message be added?
>>>> Maybe with a suggestion to increase the size of that queue or to
>>>> enable syn cookies.
>>>>
>>>> Greetings,
>>>>
>>>> Olaf
>>>>
>>>> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=520668
>>>> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=520667
>>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/57091
>>>>
>>> Somebody?
>>
>> Anybody?
>
> This is a user selectable setting. What's wrong with /etc/sysctl.conf ?

It requires user action...
Often you notice cookies are disabled only after a service becomes unreachable.
What's wrong with improving defaults?
Don't forget the missing log entries.

Olaf