freeradius 2.1.8 dies Error: ASSERT FAILED event.c[1084]: home->ev != NULL

[Alan DeKok]

fab junkmail wrote:
> I recently upgraded our freeradius servers to 2.1.8 and over the past
> month it has died on one of the servers two times (spaced about two
> weeks apart I think). So fairly infrequently.

  OK.

> A bit of background, We use this server predominantly to proxy
> requests. Every day for about 15 minutes, the two main home servers we
> proxy to stop responding (they are doing backups or maintenance during
> this time) so for those 15 minutes our clients (LNS/NAS) would be
> sending a very large number of accounting interim packets and some
> stop packets and would be resending these while the home servers are
> down.

  You can configure the proxy to log accounting packets to disk when the
home server is down.  See raddb/sites-available/robust-proxy-accounting

> Sun Mar 14 17:30:15 2010 : Proxy: Marking home server 10.0.1.48
> port 1646 as zombie (it looks like it is dead).
> Sun Mar 14 17:30:16 2010 : Proxy: Marking home server 10.0.1.47
> port 1646 as zombie (it looks like it is dead).
> Sun Mar 14 17:30:19 2010 : Proxy: Marking home server 10.0.1.47
> port 1645 as zombie (it looks like it is dead).
> Sun Mar 14 17:30:19 2010 : Error: No response to status check 903535
> for home server 10.0.1.48 port 1646
> Sun Mar 14 17:30:20 2010 : Error: No response to status check 903536
> for home server 10.0.1.47 port 1646
> ...
> Sun Mar 14 17:30:32 2010 : Error: Internal sanity check failed for
> child state

  Hmm... that's not good.

> Fri Mar 19 17:30:54 2010 : Proxy: Failed to create a new socket for
> proxying requests.

  Why is it running out of sockets?  This shouldn't happen.

> Fri Mar 19 17:30:54 2010 : Proxy: Failed to create a new socket for
> proxying requests.
> Fri Mar 19 17:30:54 2010 : Proxy: Failed to create a new socket for
> proxying requests.
> ...
> Fri Mar 19 17:30:56 2010 : Error: ASSERT FAILED event.c[1084]:
> home->ev != NULL

  Well... after all of the previous errors, it's not surprising that
something *worse* eventually goes wrong.  It's like driving your car for
45 minutes after the tires are flat: not a good idea.

> That last one is where it dies I think.

  Yes.

> That one was found to be a bug and was fixed - I don't know if my case
> is a bug though.

  It's a bug, but the other problems you're seeing should be fixed, too.

> I don't currently use the robust proxy accounting that that thread
> suggests. I expect that would probably work around the issue of
> freeradius crashing in this case and I will give that a go.

  Yes.

> Just
> posting this to let you know that it _might_ be a bug and to ask for
> advice about whether you think this is a bug or not, and if I should
> follow up on that, or if you think it is just my configuration that
> needs some changes and what areas I should concentrate on if that is
> the case?

  You have a NAS which is sending large amounts of traffic to a proxy
when the home server is down.  The proxy isn't configured to do anything
useful with the packets.  This is a bug in the *architecture*.

  Alan DeKok.