Squid stalls

Hi

I am running a Debian box (Kernel ver 2.4.23-1-k7) with Squid (2.5.4-3) on
an ISDN connection for company with about eight users. The PC is a 1.2GHz
AMD with 256MB RAM and a 20GB drive.

Somthing that stared happening after my last update is that Squid stalls -
browsers get the usual IE message "page cannot be displayed" but no error
message from Squid either. I see the incoming request in the access.log but
no data (see below)

1073984508.606 23561 192.168.2.5 TCP_MISS/000 0 GET http://www.google.com/
- NONE/- -

the ISDN connection is set to auto dial and seems to work fine when the
users bypass the proxy.

the problem also goes away temporarily if I restart squid

anyone have any ideas


James

James <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am running a Debian box (Kernel ver 2.4.23-1-k7) with Squid (2.5.4-3) on
> an ISDN connection for company with about eight users. The PC is a 1.2GHz
> AMD with 256MB RAM and a 20GB drive.

> Somthing that stared happening after my last update

I don't recall there being a security update for squid, what flavour of
Debian are you using?

Tell us more about the stalls. What duration are they? Are they
consistent? Does it effect other services?

Af the duration is about 6 seconds consistently, that's an almost
surefire DNS related issue.

> the problem also goes away temporarily if I restart squid

How long till the problem reemerges?

Does the problem disappear if you use a different client? Does one
particular client seem to exacerbate the problem?

--
Cameron Kerr
(E-Mail Removed) : http://nzgeeks.org/cameron/
Empowered by Perl!

Hi Cameron

A couple of your comments have got me thinking - for a change :-)

If it is DNS then it's difficult for me to determine because I ssh on to
the server via the net. So when I restart squid the resolv.conf file has
the correct nameserver entry which has been updated by ipppd - could be
caused by incorrectly set up resolve.conf which I'll check - am I correct
in thinking that resolv.conf should have a valid - external - nameserver
entry on a dial-up system, that way squid will be forced to query an
address that is external and the ipppd will bring up the connection ?

thanks for the help

J

Cameron Kerr <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed):

> James <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> I am running a Debian box (Kernel ver 2.4.23-1-k7) with Squid
>> (2.5.4-3) on an ISDN connection for company with about eight users.
>> The PC is a 1.2GHz AMD with 256MB RAM and a 20GB drive.
>
>> Somthing that stared happening after my last update
>
> I don't recall there being a security update for squid, what flavour
> of Debian are you using?

sarge (testing)

>
> Tell us more about the stalls. What duration are they? Are they
> consistent? Does it effect other services?
>

does not affect other services as far as I can tell

> Af the duration is about 6 seconds consistently, that's an almost
> surefire DNS related issue.

pretty much permanent - users can't browse at all
it's difficult for me to tell if its DNS as I usually ssh in to the
server and re-start squid which then works fine for a couple of hours /
days

>
>> the problem also goes away temporarily if I restart squid
>
> How long till the problem reemerges?

varies from a couple of hours to teh next day

>
> Does the problem disappear if you use a different client? Does one
> particular client seem to exacerbate the problem?
>

not that I can tell

James wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am running a Debian box (Kernel ver 2.4.23-1-k7) with Squid (2.5.4-3) on
> an ISDN connection for company with about eight users. The PC is a 1.2GHz
> AMD with 256MB RAM and a 20GB drive.
>
> Somthing that stared happening after my last update is that Squid stalls -
> browsers get the usual IE message "page cannot be displayed" but no error
> message from Squid either. I see the incoming request in the access.log but
> no data (see below)
>
> 1073984508.606 23561 192.168.2.5 TCP_MISS/000 0 GET http://www.google.com/
> - NONE/- -
>
> the ISDN connection is set to auto dial and seems to work fine when the
> users bypass the proxy.
>
> the problem also goes away temporarily if I restart squid
>
> anyone have any ideas
>
>
> James

Are you out of disk space on the fs where the cache_dir lives? This
happened to me once.

brettg <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:7GjOb.16589$(E-Mail Removed):

> James wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> I am running a Debian box (Kernel ver 2.4.23-1-k7) with Squid
>> (2.5.4-3) on an ISDN connection for company with about eight users.
>> The PC is a 1.2GHz AMD with 256MB RAM and a 20GB drive.
>>
>> Somthing that stared happening after my last update is that Squid
>> stalls - browsers get the usual IE message "page cannot be displayed"
>> but no error message from Squid either. I see the incoming request in
>> the access.log but no data (see below)
>>
>> 1073984508.606 23561 192.168.2.5 TCP_MISS/000 0 GET
>> http://www.google.com/ - NONE/- -
>>
>> the ISDN connection is set to auto dial and seems to work fine when
>> the users bypass the proxy.
>>
>> the problem also goes away temporarily if I restart squid
>>
>> anyone have any ideas
>>
>>
>> James
>
> Are you out of disk space on the fs where the cache_dir lives? This
> happened to me once.
>
>

Nope - plenty of disk space - though if I clear and rebuild the cache it
seems to run for a couple of days before the problems start again

When running Squid Cache there are 4 major factors to be aware of:
- disk space
- inodes
- simultaneous open file descriptors
- memory

Given that shutting down and restarting Squid fixes your issue, I'm guessing the most
likely culprit is simultaneous open file descriptors. (I think this is a compile-time
issue/fix.)

Check out cache.log an see if it's whining about anything.

From memory there's a squid option to increase the verbosity in the log (though I might
just be senile)

Enjoy,
PhiL P

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, (E-Mail Removed) says...
> brettg <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
> news:7GjOb.16589$(E-Mail Removed):
>
> > James wrote:
> >> Hi
> >>
> >> I am running a Debian box (Kernel ver 2.4.23-1-k7) with Squid
> >> (2.5.4-3) on an ISDN connection for company with about eight users.
> >> The PC is a 1.2GHz AMD with 256MB RAM and a 20GB drive.
> >>
> >> Somthing that stared happening after my last update is that Squid
> >> stalls - browsers get the usual IE message "page cannot be displayed"
> >> but no error message from Squid either. I see the incoming request in
> >> the access.log but no data (see below)
> >>
> >> 1073984508.606 23561 192.168.2.5 TCP_MISS/000 0 GET
> >> http://www.google.com/ - NONE/- -
> >>
> >> the ISDN connection is set to auto dial and seems to work fine when
> >> the users bypass the proxy.
> >>
> >> the problem also goes away temporarily if I restart squid
> >>
> >> anyone have any ideas
> >>
> >>
> >> James
> >
> > Are you out of disk space on the fs where the cache_dir lives? This
> > happened to me once.
> >
> >
>
> Nope - plenty of disk space - though if I clear and rebuild the cache it
> seems to run for a couple of days before the problems start again
>
>
>