[netflow-tools] "Fatal error - exiting immediately"

[Tony and Robyn Lewis]

Damien Miller wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Nov 2005, Tony and Robyn Lewis wrote:
>
>> Have just come across softflowd, and am trying to get it working.
>>
>> When I run it, i get a fatal error:
>>
>> me at mymachine:~/softflowd-0.9.7$ sudo ./softflowd -i eth0
>> -nlocalhost:2055 -d -D
>> softflowd v0.9.7 starting data collection
>> Exporting flows to [127.0.0.1]:2055
>> Fatal error - exiting immediately
>
>
> That indicates a malloc() failure usually. Are you running with tight 
> ulimits?
>
>> Exiting immediately on user request
>>
>> I had a quick poke in the code, but nothing jumped out.  I can see where
>> the error is reported, but it looks like it's generated in the big
>> for(;;) loop.
>>
>> I'm using libpcap0.8 headers, though I tried it with libpcap0.7 too.
>>
>> The following tail end of strace output might yield clues:
>
>
> Do you have ltrace or any tools that can trace system library calls? 
> That would probably be more useful.

Nice, hadn't stumbled across ltrace.

Relevant bits;
--------------------------------------------------------------------
vfprintf(0xb7ee7de0, "%s v%s starting data collection", 
0xbfb2fa88softflowd v0.9.7 starting data collection) = 41
fputc('\n', 0xb7ee7de0
)                          = 10
vfprintf(0xb7ee7de0, "Exporting flows to [%s]:%s", 0xbfb2fa88Exporting 
flows to [127.0.0.1]:2055) = 35
fputc('\n', 0xb7ee7de0
)                          = 10
gettimeofday(0xbfb2faf8, NULL)                   = 0
pcap_fileno(0x8052058, 0, 0xbfb32e00, 0xbfb32d00, 0) = 3
gettimeofday(0xbfb2fa78, NULL)                   = 0
poll(0xbfb32ff0, 2, -1, -1, 0)                   = 1
pcap_dispatch(0x8052058, 8192, 0x804c0a0, 0xbfb33000, 0) = 1
vfprintf(0xb7ee7de0, "Fatal error - exiting immediatel"..., 
0xbfb2fa88Fatal error - exiting immediately) = 33
fputc('\n', 0xb7ee7de0
)                          = 10
vfprintf(0xb7ee7de0, "Exiting immediately on user requ"..., 
0xbfb2fa88Exiting immediately on user request) = 35
fputc('\n', 0xb7ee7de0
)                          = 10
pcap_close(0x8052058, 0x804f984, 0x804c0a0, 0xbfb33000, 0) = 489
close(4)                                         = 0
unlink("/var/run/softflowd.pid")                 = -1
unlink("/var/run/softflowd.ctl")                 = 0
+++ exited (status 0) +++
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Tony