Anonymization of argus flow data

Tue Sep 3 14:33:02 EDT 2013

Hmmmmmm, well, you're not using the machine much (85% idle)
so I'm looking into whether we're making any calls to any
routines that would add some wait states, like name lookups, or
sleeping somewhere.  

Lets assume that there is a big problem, and I'll try to make
some changes to improve your performance.

Carter

On Sep 3, 2013, at 1:57 PM, Kaustubh Gadkari <kaustubh at cs.colostate.edu> wrote:

> Hey Carter,
> 
> On Sep 3, 2013, at 11:36 AM, Carter Bullard <carter at qosient.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hey Kaustubh,
>> If its still writing records to the output file, its not in an infinite loop,
>> although I'm sure that it feels like one.  So, no need to print debug msgs
>> or run under gdb().
>> 
>> Hmmmmmm, you must have a very large number of IP addresses.  racount() isn't doing
>> anything exotic with the "-M addr" mode.  Its hashing and storing each unique
>> IP address, so that we can report on how many and what types.
>> 
>> My guess is that you must be short on physical memory, and the programs are swapping,
>> which means that everything on this machine will be going very slowly.
>> Run " top " to see if one of our programs is eating all the memory, or
>> use vmstat() or vm_stat() or whatever to see if there is any paging.
>> 
> 
> No, the machine is not running out of memory. ranonymize is the largest memory user, and it is using 42.1% of a total of 32GB RAM. The swap usage is only 205MB, which is OK.  vmstat shows me the following:
> 
> kaustubh at proton:~$ sudo vmstat -w
> procs -------------------memory------------------ ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu-------
> r  b       swpd       free       buff      cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs  us sy  id wa st
> 1  0     205916    1638176     101636   16287400    0    0   527   342    1    1  14  0  85  1  0
> 
> There are no other memory intensive processes running on the box.
> 
>> If it is a memory problem, then you will need to subdivide the data based
>> on size, not on time, using rasplit().  And yes its easy to merge split files
>> back to a single file.
>> 
>> UNFORTUNATELY, because the scope of anonymization is the file, anonymizing a
>> single big file of records will generate different results compared to
>> anonymizing a set of split files created from the big file.  Address A will be
>> anonymized potentially to a different address in each file.
>> 
>> The configuration provides the means to get consistent results between files,
>> but its a bit of work to do so.
>> 
>> Do you think you're running out of memory?
>> 
> 
> No, I think I'm ok in terms of memory usage.
> 
> Kaustubh
> 
>> Carter
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sep 3, 2013, at 1:11 PM, Kaustubh Gadkari <kaustubh.gadkari at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Carter Bullard <carter at qosient.com> wrote:
>>>> Hmmm, if racount() takes 18min, I would think ranonymize() should take about 20min
>>>> to complete.   You can run " racount -M addr " to get racount() to printout address
>>>> information, like how many addresses are in the file.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Carter, I ran racount with -M addr, but the process hasn't finished
>>> yet (it's been running for about 90 min now). I'll let it run for a
>>> while longer and keep you updated.
>>> 
>>>> ranonymize() works on a single argus record at a time, reading a single record,
>>>> anonymizing all the various data elements, and then writing the anonymized
>>>> record out to the output file.  If ranonymize() hasn't written out a record recently,
>>>> then its possible that its in an infinite loop, especially if its running at 100%, and
>>>> its been running for a month, and it seems to have stopped writing into the file.
>>>> What was the last " modified " time on your output file ???
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> It hasn't stopped writing to file .. the last modified time is right
>>> now, since the process is still running.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> If you've compiled debug support into your ra* programs, you can send a USR1
>>>> signal to the running ranonymize() and it will start writing debug information out
>>>> to stderr().  Send a USR2 to turn debug output off.  Assuming that ranonymize()s
>>>> process id is 35122, you can do this:
>>>> 
>>>> % kill -USR1 35122
>>>> % kill -USR2 35122
>>>> 
>>>> If you've compiled development support into your programs, you can attach
>>>> to ranonymize() using gdb(), and then step through the program to see where
>>>> it is.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> I haven't compiled my ra* programs with debug or development support.
>>> If you can tell me what I need to change in the Makefiles, I can do so
>>> and run ranonymize with gdb and see what's happening.
>>> 
>>> Kaustubh
>>> 
>>>> % gdb ranonymize 35122
>>>> 
>>>> This will attach to the program, and stop the acitve process.  If this all seems
>>>> unfamiliar, send more email, and I'll walk you through one of these strategies.
>>>> 
>>>> Carter
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Sep 3, 2013, at 9:56 AM, Kaustubh Gadkari <kaustubh.gadkari at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Kaustubh Gadkari
>>>>> <kaustubh.gadkari at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 6:00 AM, Carter Bullard <carter at qosient.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Hmmmm,
>>>>>>> There shouldn't be any performance issues with anonymizing a file, if your
>>>>>>> just
>>>>>>> anonymizing the IP addresses.  How many addresses are in the file?
>>>>>>> What does your ranonymize.conf file look like?   How much memory is it
>>>>>>> using?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I am not quite sure how many IP addresses there are in the file. My
>>>>>> ranonymize.conf looks like this:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> RANON_PRESERVE_ETHERNET_VENDOR=yes
>>>>>> RANON_PRESERVE_BROADCAST_ADDRESS=yes
>>>>>> RANON_NET_ANONYMIZATION=sequential
>>>>>> RANON_HOST_ANONYMIZATION=sequential
>>>>>> RANON_PRESERVE_NET_ADDRESS_HIERARCHY=class
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I took a look at how much memory ranonymize is using .. the usage is
>>>>>> about 42% on a machine with 32GB RAM.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> ranonymize() can be a little complex O(nLogN + C), but it should be
>>>>>>> in the same time frame as racount().  How long does it take for racount()
>>>>>>> to read the file?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I am running racount right now .. I will post results once it finishes.
>>>>> 
>>>>> racount takes about 18min to run on the file:
>>>>> 
>>>>> real    17m58.528s
>>>>> user    17m12.413s
>>>>> sys     2m0.332s
>>>>> 
>>>>> Kaustubh
>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Just a rule of thumb. If a ra* program doesn't complete in a few minutes,
>>>>>>> you
>>>>>>> should stop it and try to figure out if there is a memory problem or not.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks, I'll keep this in mind :)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>> Kaustubh
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Carter
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Sep 2, 2013, at 2:20 PM, Kaustubh Gadkari <kaustubh.gadkari at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I have a set of argus flow data captured at our data capture vantage point,
>>>>>>> and I want to anonymize the IP addresses (both source and destination) fully
>>>>>>> i.e. I want to replace both the addresses, using a prefix preserving
>>>>>>> technique. I have tried using ranonymize, but it is taking an extremely long
>>>>>>> time to anonymize the file (I started the process a couple of months ago, on
>>>>>>> a ~125GB file, and the output file size today is only ~30GB).
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Can anyone suggest the right way to go about anonymizing the data set I
>>>>>>> have? Is ranonymize the right tool for the job?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>> Kaustubh
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Kaustubh Gadkari
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Kaustubh Gadkari
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Kaustubh Gadkari
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Kaustubh Gadkari
>>> 
>> 
> 
> --
> Kaustubh Gadkari
> kaustubh at cs.colostate.edu
> 

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