Hi Jeremy,

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Jeremy Lee <[email protected]> wrote:
> I classified it as "Syslog" (does the classification make much of a
> difference though?). # of lines per entry varies greatly since it's
> non-standard. I really wish the app was designed to log in standard format,
> but at this point that would be a minor change request that would be shifted
> probably all the way to the back of the queue for development items :(
>

The different log formats are read differently. Apache logs look
different than syslog messages. I was hoping the multi-line log type
might help, but that seems to require a set number of lines per
message.

> In either case, that would make sense - I can foresee logging of 1000 events
> per second easily during peak times. And if over half the logs consist of
> 25+ newlines, that would exponentially consume resources. I did a quick line
> count of the log file from that day and there were over 40 million lines in
> a 24 hour period! I'd have to do more analysis to figure out the breakdown
> per hour, but I'm pretty sure my theory is holding that this particular log
> file is a bit much for OSSEC to handle at least when volume/web traffic is
> high for us.
>

<kludge> If the log file ONLY receives logs from this application, you
could write a script to read the messages and convert them into
something more useful. </kludge>

> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:49 AM, dan (ddp) <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jeremy,
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Jeremy Lee <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > Thanks for the response Daniel. Unfortunately, I didn't get to measure #
>> > of
>> > events per second for the particular log. One thing I was also wondering
>> > though: would the size of each log potentially create issues? The log is
>> > in
>> > non-standard format and so one log entry may end up containing 25+
>> > newlines.
>> > I would have to guess that OSSEC may read each newline as a new entry?
>> > I'm
>> > wondering if that may have been throwing it off...?
>> >
>>
>> What log format do you have these classified as? Is there a a set
>> number of lines in each entry (I'm guessing not, but worth checking
>> ;))?
>> It's possible that each "line\n" is considered a new log message, so
>> even though you've technically got 1000 events, OSSEC sees 25000.
>>
>> > On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 7:51 AM, Daniel Cid <[email protected]>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Do you know how much events/logs it created per second? On the agent
>> >> side it should
>> >> be able to easily handle many thousands of logs per second without any
>> >> tunning...
>> >>
>> >> thanks,
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 1:37 PM, jplee3 <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >> > Hi all,
>> >> >
>> >> > We experienced 90%+ utliziation from the ossec-agentd on a couple
>> >> > servers this morning and I was able to trace it to a log file that
>> >> > grew extremely large in a relatively short time window (1gb of growth
>> >> > within a 2-3 hour time window). After removing the log for OSSEC to
>> >> > monitor, agentd quieted down. Prior to this the systems were almost
>> >> > to
>> >> > the point of being hosed. This is on Linux btw. I read an article
>> >> > mentioning excessive # of events at least in Windows will be the
>> >> > catalyst of issues like this.
>> >> >
>> >> > In any case, is there a breakdown on what OSSEC's limitation/capacity
>> >> > is in respect to this? Of course, I'm sure it's partly dependent on
>> >> > hardware capacity. One of the servers, in the same load-balanced vip,
>> >> > did not experience these symptoms. The difference is that this
>> >> > particular server is running on leveled-up hardware (DL380 G4 versus
>> >> > the ones with issues: DL360 G4's) and and a newer OS. I believe the
>> >> > DL360 G4's are both running 2.6.12-1.1372_FC3smp (Fedora Core
>> >> > 3?!?!?!)
>> >> > while the DL380 G4 is on RH (not sure which version but if I had to
>> >> > guess a more recent version of RHEL).
>> >> >
>> >> > Besides the 'obvious' rhetoric: "upgrade your hardware and software!"
>> >> > - is there any other possible avenues to investigate with why the
>> >> > ossec-agentd was unable to handle the volume of log growth? Obviously
>> >> > it's the rate at which events are generated in the logs as we
>> >> > understand that OSSEC does not read in the entire file at once, etc
>> >> >
>> >> > Any ideas or suggestions?
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > TIA!
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >
>> >
>
>

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