Re: Snort Command/Control architecture when running as a deamon

[Noah Dietrich <noah_dietrich () 86penny org>]

would it be easier to configure the systemd service to restart snort if the
service failed?  adding something like:

[Service]
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s


to the Snort3 unit file?

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 2:30 PM Robert Ellis via Snort-devel <
snort-devel () lists snort org> wrote:

> Hello & Happy New Year.
>
> Presuming a deployment of Snort 3 on Ubuntu with Snort configured to run
> as a deamon and configured 'in-line' (i.e. to operate as a IPS and drop bad
> connections/packet streams)
>
> Let us say I wanted to develop a new "Snort Health Check" deamon to
> continuously monitor the health of the Snort deamon
>
> In the Snort manual I have found this:
>
> 1.10 Control Socket
> > Snort can be configured to provide a Unix socket that can be used to
> > issue commands to the running process. You must build snort with the
> > -enable-control-socket option. The control socket functionality is
> > supported on Linux only.
> > Snort can be configured to use control socket using the command line
> > argument -cs-dir <path> and snort config option cs_dir as follows:
> > snort --cs-dir <path>
> > config cs_dir:<path>
> > <path> specifies the directory for snort to create the socket. If
> > relative path is used, the path is relative to pid path specified. If there
> > is no pid path specified, it is relative to current working directory.
> > A command snort_control is made and installed along with snort in the
> > same bin directory when configured with the -enable-control-socket
> >  option.
>
> This control socket looks like it *may *be the ideal way to query the
> Snort daemon to determine:
> 1) that the Snort deamon is 'alive' in the most basic sense (i.e. it has
> been launched)
> 2) that the Snort deamon is operational in a more specific and meaningful
> sense (e.g. the Snort deamon process is responsive to a command and the
> response is sane/consistent)
>
> Question 1: is that right? Or is there a
> better/more-appropriate alternative for programatically querying the health
> of a running Snort deamon?
>
> Question 2: if the above does indeed seem a reasonable approach, then is
> there a particular command that would be a logical choice to issue for the
> purpose of a routine health check?
>
> In the Manual at Section 1.7.1 there is an illustration of Output metrics
> but I understand these are outputted only when Snort terminates:
>
> ===============================================================================
> Run time for packet processing was 175.856509 seconds
> Snort processed 3716022 packets.
> Snort ran for 0 days 0 hours 2 minutes 55 seconds
>    Pkts/min:      1858011
>    Pkts/sec:        21234
>
>
> ===============================================================================
>
> If there were a command that facilitated the output of one or more of
> these metrics in real-time, it might be ideal for health-checking purposes,
> but I have been unable to find anything documented that looks like the
> right fit.
>
> Any ideas or pointers would be gratefully received. (I intend to take a
> closer look at the Snort++ source code shortly, too; any pointers to the
> relevant sections would also be appreciated).
>
> Many thanks
>
> Robert
>
>
>
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