pmacct v1.7.8 releases: passive network monitoring tools

by do son · Published May 17, 2019 · Updated January 2, 2023

pmacct is a small set of multi-purpose passive network monitoring tools. It can account, classify, aggregate, replicate and export forwarding-plane data, ie. IPv4 and IPv6 traffic; collect and correlate control-plane data via BGP and BMP; collect infrastructure data via Streaming Telemetry. Each component works both as a standalone daemon and as a thread of execution for correlation purposes (ie. enrich NetFlow with BGP data). pmacct main features are:

Suitable to ISP, IXP, CDN, IP carrier, Cloud, DC and hot-spots environments and SDN solutions
Runs on Linux, BSDs, Solaris and embedded systems
Support for both IPv4 and IPv6
Collects data through libpcap, Netlink/NFLOG, NetFlow v1/v5/v7/v8/v9, sFlow v2/v4/v5 and IPFIX
Collects Streaming Telemetry data
Supports Cisco NEL for CGNAT scenarios and Cisco NSEL
Saves data to a number of backends including:
- Relational databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite
- noSQL databases: MongoDB and BerkeleyDB
- AMQP message exchanges: RabbitMQ
- Kafka message brokers
- memory tables
- flat files
Exports data to remote collectors through IPFIX, NetFlow v5/v9 and sFlow v5
Replicates incoming IPFIX, NetFlow and sFlow packets to remote collectors
Flexible architecture to tag, filter, redirect, aggregate and split captured data
Comes with:
- a BGP daemon/thread for efficient visibility into the inter-domain routing plane. Read more here.
  - Supports BGP/MPLS VPNs rfc4364, Label Unicast rfc3107
  - Supports BGP ADD-PATHs (draft-IETF-IDR-add-paths) for visibility of BGP multi-path routes
  - Can log live BGP messaging and/or dump BGP tables per peer at a regular time interval
- a BMP daemon/thread to gain insight in BGP data, events and statistics
  - Supports draft-IETF-grow-bmp-loc-rib and draft-IETF-grow-bmp-adj-rib-out (from 1.7.1)
- an IS-IS/IGP daemon/thread for visibility of internal routes
Packet classification via nDPI (from 1.7.0)
Inspection of tunneled traffic (ie. GTP)
GeoIP lookups leveraging Maxmind library
Pluggable architecture for easy integration of new capturing environments and data backends
Careful SQL support: data pre-processing, triggers, dynamic table naming
It’s free, open-source, developed and supported with passion and an open mind for more than 10 years

Changelog v1.7.8

Introduced support for eBPF for all daemons: if SO_REUSEPORT is
supported by the OS and eBPF support is compiled in, this allows
to load a custom load-balancer. To load-share, daemons have to
be part of the same cluster_name and each be configured with a
distinct cluster_id.
Introduced support for listening on VRF interfaces on Linux for
all daemons. The feature can be enabled via nfacctd_interface,
bgp_daemon_interface and equivalent knobs. Many thanks to
Marcel Menzel ( @WRMSRwasTaken ) for this contribution.
pre_tag_map: introduced limited tagging / labelling support for
BGP (pmbgpd), BMP (pmbmpd), Streaming Telemetry (pmtelemetryd)
daemons. ip, set_tag, set_label keys being currently supported.
pre_tag_map: defined a new pre_tag_label_encode_as_map config
knob to encode the output ‘label’ value as a map for JSON and
Apache Avro encodings, ie. in JSON “label”: { “key1”: “value1”,
“key2”: “value2” }. For keys and values to be correctly mapped,
the ‘%’ delimiter is used when composing a pre_tag_map, ie.
“set_label=key1%value1,key2%value2 ip=0.0.0.0/0”. Thanks to
Salvatore Cuzzilla ( @scuzzilla ) for this contribution.
pre_tag_map: introduced support for IP prefixes for src_net
and dst_net keys for indexed maps (maps_index set to true).
Indexing being an hash map, this feature currently tests data
against all defined IP prefix lenghts in the map for a match
(first defined matching prefix wins).
pre_tag_map: introduced two new ‘is_nsel’, ‘is_nel’ keys to
check for the presence of firewallEvent field (233) and
natEvent field (230) in NetFlow/IPFIX respectively in order
to infer whether data is NSEL / NEL. If set to ‘true’ this
does match NSEL / NEL data, if set to ‘false’ it does match
non NSEL / NEL data respectively.
Introduced a new mpls_label_stack primitive, encoded as a
string and includes a comma-separated list of integers (label
values). Thanks to Salvatore Cuzzilla ( @scuzzilla ) for this
contribution.
Introduced a new fw_event primitive, to support NetFlow v9/
IPFIX firewallEvent 233 Information Element.
Introduced a new tunnel_tcp_flags primitive for pmacctd and
sfacctd to record TCP flags for the inner layer of a tunneled
technology (ie. VXLAN). Also tunnel_dst_port decoding was
fixed for sfacctd.
Introduced support for in/out VLAN support for sfacctd. To be
savy, ‘in_vlan’ and ‘vlan’ were muxed onto the same primitive
depending on the daemon being used. Thanks to Jim Westfall
( @jwestfall69 ) for this contribution.
Introduced a new mpls_label_stack_encode_as_array config knob
to encode the MPLS label stack as an array for JSON and Apache
Avro encodings, ie. in JSON “mpls_label_stack”: [ “0-label0”,
“1-label1”, “2-label2”, “3-label3”, “4-label4”, “5-label5” ]
and in Avro “name”: “mpls_label_stack”, “type”: { “type”:
“array”, “items”: { “type”: “string” } }. Thanks to Salvatore
Cuzzilla ( @scuzzilla ) for this contribution.
Introduced a new tcpflags_encode_as_array config knob to encode
TCP flags as an array for JSON and Apache Avro, ie. in JSON
“tcp_flags”: [ “URG”, “ACK”, “PSH”, “RST”, “SYN”, “FIN” ] and
in Avro “name”: “tcp_flags”, “type”: { “type”: “array”,
“items”: { “type”: “string” } }. Thanks to Salvatore Cuzzilla
( @scuzzilla ) for this contribution.
Introduced a new fwd_status_encode_as_string config knob to
encode the ‘fwd_status’ primitive in human-readable format
like described by RFC-7270 Section 4.12 when JSON or Avro
formats are selected for output. Thanks to Salvatore Cuzzilla
( @scuzzilla ) for this contribution.
Introduced a new protos_file to define a list of (known/
interesting/meaningful) IP protocols. Both protocol names, ie.
“tcp”, and protocol numbers, ie. 1 (for icmp), are accepted.
IANA reserved protocol value 255 is used to bucket as ‘others’
those IP protocols not matching the ones defined in the list.
Introduced a new tos_file to define a list of (meaningful) IP
ToS values; if tos_encode_as_dscp is set to true then DSCP
values are expected as part of the file. The directive uses
value 255 to bucket as ‘others’ those ToS/DSCP values not
matching the ones defined in the list.
A new tos_encode_as_dscp config knob makes pmacct to honour
only the 6 bits used by DSCP and report only on those.
BGP, BMP, Streaming Telemetry daemons: introduced a new
dump_time_slots config knob to spread the load deriving by
dumps over the configured refresh time interval. The interval
is divided into time slots and nodes are assigned to such
slots. The slot for each node is determined using its IP
address. Thanks to Raphael Barazzutti ( @rbarazzutti ) for
this contribution.
BGP, BMP daemons: End-of-RIB messages are now being exposed
in the output feed in order to facilitate tracking their
arrival (or not!).
pmtelemetryd: aligned daemon to the latest Unyte UDP-Notif API
(0.6.1) and related standardization draft-ietf-netconf-udp-notif
RPKI daemon: added case for input “asn” value being integer (ie.
“asn” : 2914) on top of the string case (ie. “asn” : “AS2914”).
Kafka, amqp plugins: introduced a new writer_id_string config
knob to allow to customize the the “writer_id” field value. A
few variables are supported along with static text definitions.
Added a new aggregate_unknown_etype config knob to account also
frames with EtherTypes for which there is no decoding support
and allow to aggregate them by the available Ethernet L2 fields
(ie. ‘src_mac’, ‘dst_mac’, ‘vlan’, ‘cos’, ‘etype’). Thanks to
@singularsyntax for this contribution.
Added a new bgp_daemon_add_path_ignore config knob to ignore
(do not advertise back) the ADD-PATH capability advertised by
remote BGP peers.
nfacctd, sfacctd: extended the possibility to run daemons from
a user with non root privileges to these daemons.
nfacctd: if Information Element 90 (MPLS VPN RD) is present in
NetFlow v9/IPFIX, make it available for BGP/BMP correlation.
pmacctd, sfacctd: introduced basic support for QinQ, 802.1AD.
[print|kafka|amqp]_preprocess: added suppport for ‘maxp’,
‘maxb’ and ‘maxf’ keys when preprocessing aggregates of non-
SQL plugins. Thanks to Andrew R. Lake ( @arlake228 ) for this
contribution.
nDPI: newer versions of the library (ie. >= 4.0) bring changes
to the API. pmacct is now aligned to compile against these. At
the same time support for nDPI 3.x was dropped.

fix, plugin_common.[ch]: when stitching feature was enabled,
ie. nfacctd_stitching, timestamp_min was never reset. Also both
timestamp_min and timestamp_max were clamped to sec granularity.
fix, BGP, BMP daemons: added a tmp_bgp_daemon_origin_type_int to
print out BGP “origin” field as int (legacy behaviour) instead
of string (current behaviour). In a future major release the
legacy behaviour will be dropped.
fix, BGP, BMP daemons: MPLS labels are now encoded in both JSON
and Apache Avro as ‘mpls_label’ instead of ‘label’. This is to
align behaviour with pre_tag_map where ‘label’ has a different
semantic.
fix, BGP, BMP daemons: resolved memory leak when encoding log
messaging (logmsg) in Avro format with Schema Registry support.
fix, BGP daemon: improved handling of ADD-PATH capability,
making it per-AF (as it is supposed to be) and not global.
fix, BMP daemon: now checking that ADD-PATH capability is
enabled at both ends of the monitored session (check both BGP
OPEN in a Peer Up message) in order to infer that the capability
exchange was successful. Also some heuristics were added to
conciliate BGP Open vs BGP Update 4-bytes ASN reality.
fix, nfacctd: improved parsing of NetFlow v9 Options data
particularly when multiple IEs are packed as part of a flowset.
fix, nfacctd: corrected parsing of Information Element 351
(layer2SegmentId).
fix, pmacctd: improved processing of pcap_interfaces_map for
cases where the same interface is present multiple times (maybe
with different directions). Also, if the map is empty then bail
out at startup.
fix, pmacctd: SEGV when ICMP/ICMPv6 traffic was processed and
‘flows’ primitive was enabled.
fix, pmacctd: sampling_rate primitive value was not reported
correctly when ‘sampling_rate’ config directive was specified.
fix, pmbgpd, pmpmbd, pmtelemtryd: changed SIGCHLD handler to
prevent zombification of last spawned data dump writer.
fix, Kafka plugin: moved the schema registration from the dump
writer to the plugin process in order to register the schemas
only once at plugin startup and not on every start of a writer
process. Thanks to Uwe Storbeck ( @ustorbeck ) for this
contribution.
fix, Kafka plugin: a check for kafka_partition was missing,
leading the plugin to always use the default partitioner
instead of sending data to the configured fixed partition.
Thanks to Martin Pels ( @rodecker ) for this contribution.
fix, nfprobe plugin: BGP data enrichment was not working due to
a mistakenly moved pointer.
fix, sfprobe plugin: AS-PATH was being populated even when null;
added a check to see if the destination AS is not zero in order
to put the destination AS into the AS-PATH for sFlow packets.
Thanks to Marcel Menzel ( @WRMSRwasTaken ) for this contribution.
fix, networks_file: remove_dupes() was making partial commits
of valid rows hence creating data inconsistencies.
fix, pre_tag_map: resolved a potential string overflow that was
being triggered in pretag_append_label() when data would be
assigned more than one single label. Also now allow ‘,’ chars
in set_label.

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Source: https://github.com/pmacct/pmacct

pmacct v1.7.8 releases: passive network monitoring tools

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