Snort mailing list archives

Re: Snort 2.9.6.0 and number of rules


From: "Russ Combs (rucombs)" <rucombs () cisco com>
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 12:47:43 +0000

If you built with --enable-debug, drop the -D and start Snort in the debugger.  You should be able to get a bt if 
something bad happens.

________________________________
From: Y M [snort () outlook com]
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2014 3:20 AM
To: snort-users
Subject: Re: [Snort-users] Snort 2.9.6.0 and number of rules

Did some troubleshooting and it seems Snort starts reading the first pcap file and then exits without reading the rest 
of the same pcap or remaining pcap files. Running Snort as daemon results:

Reading network traffic from "/tmp/pcaps/pcap1.pcap" with snaplen = 1514
Spawning daemon child...
My daemon child 4216 lives...
Parent waiting for child...
Child terminated unexpectedly (0)
Daemon parent exiting (0)

So I recompiled Snort with  --enable-debug --enable-debug-msgs --enable-gdb. Running gdb bt always returns "No Stack.". 
I also used export SNORT_DEBUG and SNORT_PP_DEBUG with values from snort_debug.h, which did not print any messages.

________________________________
From: snort () outlook com
To: snort-users () lists sourceforge net
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2014 16:39:42 +0000
Subject: [Snort-users] Snort 2.9.6.0 and number of rules

We have a development/testing Snort box (VM) running Snort 2.9.6.0 that we mainly use for testing custom rules. We are 
experiencing an odd behavior depending on the number of rules enabled. For instance, we have a set of 4 pcaps that we 
are currently working on with the following sizes:

pcap1.pcap --> 6.2 MB
pcap2.pcap --> 2.4 MB
pcap3.pcap --> 17.9 MB
pcap4.pcap --> 2.2 MB

If the rules are setup to run the Security policy, then we get the associated alerts that we are expecting to be 
generated (over 1700 alerts) including both VRT and our custom alerts. The pcaps are being read through --pcap-dir and 
--pcap-show. However, if all of the rules are enabled and we run the same command we only get 2 alerts (1 VRT and 1 
custom).

The same behavior also happens when run snort against the pcaps individually using the -r command. I tested the same 
pcaps using the above scenario against a VM running Snort 2.9.5.6 and we always get the expected behavior as above 
(over 1700 alerts).

One thing I noticed is that when using the Security policy, is that when Snort completes reading the pcap, the exit 
statistics are displayed. However, when having all of the rules enables, exit statistics do not display at all.

Both VMs running Snort 2.9.5.6 and 2.9.6.0 has the same configurations and the same number of rules with exception that 
Snort 2.9.6.0 was configured with the file_inspect preprocessor, though it is disabled. I recompiled Snort with only 
--enable-sourcefire and --enable-reload, but the same odd behavior remained. The VM running Snort 2.9.6.0 has a 12 core 
cpu and 8 GB of RAM.

Has anyone experienced the same behavior or tested Snort with all the rules enabled against some pcaps? I must be doing 
something stupid here or there.

Thanks.
YM

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