Re: [gentoo-user] strange TCP timeout errors

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On 07/10/2015 21:42, brettrsears@gmail.com wrote:
> YyyyYYuIIIIIU
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry


Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, interesting reply. I'm wondering if it has something to
do with:

1. verizon
2. dodgy 3g
3. crapberry. oops, sorry: blackberry

Or maybe it's because y, u and i are in a row on the keyboard, shift and
enter are adjacent, and you have a over-friendly cat?

:-)

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 20:39:42 
> To: <gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org>
> Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] strange TCP timeout errors
> 
> On 07/10/2015 17:55, Grant wrote:
>>>>>>> I've attached a PNG from Munin showing the TCP timeout errors on my
>>>>>>> Gentoo server over the past month.  The data is expressed in timeouts
>>>>>>> per second and that rate is shown to be steadily increasing over the
>>>>>>> past month.  That seems strange to me.  Munin doesn't show any other
>>>>>>> data point increasing like this over the time period.  Any ideas?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> - Grant
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> weird - does it reset on an interface restart or reboot?
>>>>>
>>>>> this would be my test #1
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I rebooted and the rate of errors has dropped off to almost nothing.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>> Can you verify its not an artefact within munin (how?)
>>>>>
>>>>> In theory, a misconfigured graph can do this. Munin can draw many
>>>>> different types of graph, including cumulative values. Even for a data
>>>>> type like this which is X events per unit time, if you tell munin to add
>>>>> them all up, it will do so and graph it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Qucik test is to look at the graph config.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This graph lives in the "network" section of the munin web interface.
>>>> There is no matching section in /etc/munin/plugin-conf.d/munin-node so
>>>> it should be be using the default config.
>>>>
>>>> Any ideas based on this new info?
>>>
>>> A few :-)
>>>
>>>
>>> I can't find the plugin that delivers that graph though. Maybe I just
>>> don't have it, maybe it comes from contrib/
>>>
>>> What's your USE for munin?
>>
>>
>> USE="apache cgi http mysql ssl syslog -asterisk -dhcpd -doc -ipmi
>> -ipv6 -irc -java -memcached -minimal -postgres (-selinux) {-test}"
>>
>>
>>> What do you have in "ls -al /etc/munin/plugins/"  ?
> 
> 
> It's as I thought - your data is accurate but rrd has been given a
> completely wrong method to derive the graphs.
> 
> Munin graphs for section "Network" do not have to be in a file called
> "network" - it's just a category and the plugin defines what web-page
> section it must be in. In your case, the relevant plugin is
> netstat_multi which doesn't often get installed. It's data source is
> "netstat -s" so grep that output for "timeout" to see it.
> 
> Timeouts are cumulative counters, they do not get less till they wrap
> around. So to scale them, the plugin gets the rrd file to subtract
> previous reading from current reading and divide by the time interval to
> get the timeouts/sec. This is all done inside rrd when the data files
> are updated (it's quite a lot of magic)
> 
> That plugin sets the graph type to DERIVE
> (/etc/munin/plugins/netstat_multi around line 190. I feel it should be
> GAUGE or COUNTER.
> 
> The proper reference on rrd is
> http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc/rrdcreate.en.html
> and the munin docs are
> https://munin.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html
> 
> You must edit the plugin file and IIRC recreate the rrd, you will lose
> all past info (can't be helped).
> 
> 
> [snip ls output]
> 
> 
>> P.S. Any other good plugins you'd recommend?
> 
> http://gallery.munin-monitoring.org/
> 
> Monitoring is highly site-specific so recommendations aren't usually
> worth much, but that gallery has LOTS of contributed plugins
> 


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com