Re: Single Snort instance with multiple configurations (output)

[Matt Kettler <mkettler () evi-inc com>]

At 08:47 AM 9/30/2003, Jukka Juslin wrote:
> Slightly related to the message below from Frank Knobbe, I would like to
> know is is possible to start one instance of Snort with multiple
> configurations (and therefore probably multiple output places)?
>
> I/we are interested in having separate output for inbound and outbound
> alerts (to be able to first consider the inbound alerts and automatically
> update the outbound).
>
> We wouldn't like to have 2 or more Snort instances running, becaus ein
> that case they will naturally fight for common resources (reading from the
> network interface etc).
>
> So, can somebody possibly help and tell if multiple configurations are
> possible?

First, what you're asking for isn't a feature of snort, and as far as I can 
tell, it doesn't make any sense to add.

How would one instance running two configurations be fundamentally 
different than two instances?

Just because it is all done by the same process does not make it 
significantly more efficient.

It is possible for two snort processes to read packets from the same 
interface, at the same time, so there's no conflict there. Pcap packet 
sniffing is not a "only one program gets the packet" system. Snort can run 
at the same time as tcpdump on the same interface, people do this every 
day. There's no reason two snort's can sniff the same ethernet card.

Therefore the only common resources you will be fighting for are CPU time 
and memory.

However, one snort process running a packet through two separate 
configurations is going to take almost the exact same amount of time and 
memory as two separate processes. Sure you save a small amount of memory 
for common code, but all the data structures, rule nodes, and preprocessor 
states will have to be separate, and that's the vast portion of the memory 
used by snort.

Savings in CPU time will also be pretty minimal. Sure you'd save a little 
bit in terms of context-switch overhead, but this wouldn't be more than a 
few microseconds per packet in savings, and on a decent CPU it would be 
more like a few hundredths of a microsecond per packet. If you have a 
multi-processor box, the CPU savings rapidly dwindle to zero due to the 
ability to parallelize the work.

Having one process do two configs would be VERY painful on the code side 
however. It would probably take a couple hundred "good" man-hours to 
implement and it would also add considerable complexity to the code, making 
it harder to maintain and producing a vast array of new bugs.  All this 
just to get a few percentage points of speed up on an uncommon configuration.

Not very worth it. Run two snorts.. there's no good reason not to.




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