perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Victor Olifer <>]

Hi Michael, 
Thanks for the explanation, I¹ll apply the fix.

The strange fact is that my description string didn¹t have any special
symbols including quotes, I double-checked it when I entered the
description string (because after the first accident I had an idea that
some special symbols could cause this effect and I was very cautious doing
it). Unfortunately I can¹t extract the description string from 50 GB file,
it would need too much efforts to find the exact position of the string
buried among slashes now -:)

OK, I hope the fix will do its job.

Thanks, 
Victor 



On 11/03/2015 13:24, "Michael Johnson" 
<>
 wrote:

>Hi Victor,
>
>We have a fix for this bug, and it will be released in the upcoming 3.4.2
>release, which should be out soon.
>
>In the meantime, be very careful that your config does not have special
>characters in the description -- that it what causes it. Typically it is
>either a single or double quote that causes the issue: ' or " although \
>or other characters could potentially be a problem.
>
>Since you're describing the backslashes growing at both ends of the
>description, I suspect your description is wrapped in quotes.
>
>
>This would cause a problem:
>description "some description here"
>
>This would be safe:
>description   some description here
>
>If you're still unsure feel free to send the actual description line from
>your config and we can double-check it.
>
>Here is the issue in our tracker:
>
>https://code.google.com/p/perfsonar-ps/issues/detail?id=1014
>
>Thanks,
>Michael
>
>On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 11:56:39AM +0000, Victor Olifer wrote:
>>Hi,
>>
>>I came across a strange behaviour of perfsonar regular testing  - after
>>a while (maybe a couple of weeks since a new test was configured) the
>>destination description field of a regular owamp test starts  filling
>>with backslashes '\' from both ends of the description text - and the
>>number of backslashes grows exponentially every day until the
>>regular_testing.conf file size (together with log files) exhausts the
>>disk size (50GB in my case) - after which perfsonar crashes of course.
>>
>>The regular_testing.conf looks like:
>>
>>[root@perfsonar
>> etc]# head -c 350 regular_testing.conf
>><test>
>>    local_interface   p3p1
>>    <parameters>
>>        test_ipv4_ipv6   1
>>        type   powstream
>>    </parameters>
>>    <target>
>>        address   192.168.121.2
>>        <override_parameters>
>>            type   powstream
>>            force_ipv4   1
>>        </override_parameters>
>>        description   \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ ...
>>(some text like "with 192.168.121.2 via private" in the middle) ..
>>\\\\\\\\\\"
>>
>>I use version 3.4.1 (3.4.1-1.pSPS) of the toolkit with the automatic
>>updates on.
>>
>>Actually, it happened with my perfsonar server for the second time; when
>>it happened  the first time I just cleaned the enormous conf and log
>>files and restarted perfsonar after which it started working. I used no
>>special symbols for the description filed. Now when it happened again I
>>think it needs some attention and help.
>>
>>Please advise me what can be done to prevent such strange crashes.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Victor
>>
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>>
>>
>
>-- 
>Michael Johnson
>GlobalNOC Software Engineering
>Indiana University
>
>812-856-2771
>