Well, you see Gracie, you are jumping to conclusions instead of providing
objective information. Any program can claim to be a "stable version" and
might have been once upon a time. But that's usually just text in an
executable file. Version numbers, now those have some comparative value.
I suspect you are a long way from the currently stable ntop version. Why?
Because in the current version of ntop, 3.0, there is no such option as -S.
And it hasn't been there for a LONG, LONG time. If you read docs/FAQ you
would find this:
Q. What was the -S option?
A. The -S option was the --store-mode option, or the "Persistent storage
mode"
Ntop's internal structures are basically an array of devices (network
interfaces), which contains an array of hosts (specific machines seen on
the
device.
So device[0] is the 1st network interface, and device[2] the third.
device[0].host[0] would be, say, the local file server and
device[0].host[1]
would be a simple host. device[1].host[1] is a completely different set
of
counts from device[0].host[1].
The -S options tells ntop to store information about a specific host in a
database from run to run (-S 0 none, -S 1 all and -S 2 only local hosts).
This is only the count information about the host and does not store the
information about a device (a network interface). Further, items of
dynamically allocated storage (the devices name) are not stored.
Data is retrieved on a subsequent run ONLY when traffic is seen from that
host after the restart. (I suppose you could script a ping to each host
you
care about and force the reload that way, but it hasn't been tested...)
So if you go into the host details (e.g. the 192.168.1.1.html page) you
should see prior-run information.
But if you're looking for device throughput to be preserved... nope...
Also, ntop stores the information during 1) reset and 2) shutdown. So if
ntop
crashes, the persistent data will be lost.
This option was removed from ntop in the 2.1.52 development version.
^^^^^^
With ntop 3.0, if you look at the log data ...
http://www.ntopsupport.com/alrOS.html ... there are a lot of people running
under 5.2.1. We did a lot of work on it around the 3.0 release - read the
back traffic in the ntop-dev list. So I can't say it's unstable by
definition. Never-the-less, in my limited experience, ntop under FreeBSD is
not as stable as ntop under Linux.
Why? There are some potential gotchas - unfortunate aspects of the userland
threads and some differing interpretations of POSIX threading. These are
places deep down in the squirrelly world of threading where the standard
allows different behaviors - and ntop is tuned towards the Solaris/Linux
choices.
-----Burton
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of
> Paul Halliday
> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 4:00 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [Ntop] Crashes.
>
>
> It was acutally a stab in the dark. The last time I posted to the list
> I did provide more information and recieved no replies.
>
> The machine in question is a freebsd 5.2.1-release machine with the
> current stable version of ntop, or so it claims upon startup. It would
> bail the odd time on sig 6's yet leave no core dump. I doubt it was a
> space issues as I believe /usr was almost 80G's, and w/o the -S option
> it is not logging to disk anyway, am I correct? The box in question is
> a dell 2.4 gx270
>
> I do have ntop running on the same layout but with different hardware,
> an HP Vectra VL400 MT. I am sure that other than the processors the
> ram and disk are close 512ram and 2 80g hd's.
>
> The other machine in question is a linux, I think redhat machine also
> running current stable. I dont have the spex offhand, hp kayak IIRC.
>
> These machines are watching about 400 machines via a span port on a
> cisco 2950 catalyst switch.
>
> So to rephrase my questions, what are some common issues that could
> cause ntop to crash?
>
> Thanks.
>
> On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 15:22:46 -0500, Burton M. Strauss III
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Has anyone seen my cat? She's somewhere...
> >
> > You just haven't given us anything to go on. How about
> providing a little
> > bit more info - which version, etc. - in fact, see "HowTo Ask
> For Help" in
> > docs/FAQ.
> >
> > -----Burton
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of
> > > Paul Halliday
> > > Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 2:45 PM
> > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > Subject: [Ntop] Crashes.
> > >
> > >
> > > Has anyone experienced random unexplained deaths of ntop? This is
> > > occuring on
> > > 2 seperate machines, one linux and a fbsd box.
> > >
> > > Thanks.
> > > --
> > > _________________
> > > Paul Halliday
> > > http://dp.penix.org
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