[squid-users] Re: kerberos authentication - performance tuning

From: Markus Moeller <huaraz_at_moeller.plus.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2011 13:09:57 -0000

Hi Peter

>"Nick Cairncross" <Nick.Cairncross_at_condenast.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:C9782338.5940F%nick.cairncross_at_condenast.co.uk...
>On 09/02/2011 09:34, "guest01" <guest01_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>We are currently using Squid 3.1.10 on RHEL5.5 and Kerberos
>>authentication for most of our clients (authorization with an icap
>>server). At the moment, we are serving approx 8000 users with two
>>servers. Unfortunately, we have performance troubles with our Kerberos
>>authentication. Load values are way tooooo high ...
>>
>>10:19:58 up 16:14, 2 users, load average: 23.03, 32.37, 25.01
>>10:19:59 up 15:37, 2 users, load average: 58.97, 57.92, 47.73
>>
>>Peak values have been >70 for the 5min interval. At the moment, there
>>are approx 400 hits/second (200 per server). We already disabled
>>caching on harddisk. Avg service time for Kerberos is up to 2500ms
>>(which is quite long).
>>
>>Our kerberos configuration looks pretty simple:
>>#KERBEROS
>>auth_param negotiate program
>>/opt/squid/libexec/negotiate_kerberos_auth -s HTTP/fqdn -r
>>auth_param negotiate children 30
>>auth_param negotiate keep_alive on
>>
>>Is there anyway for further caching or something like that?
>>
>>For testing purposes, we authenticated a certain subnet by IP and load
>>values decreased to <1. (Unfortunately, this is not possible because
>>every user gets a policy assigned by its username)
>>
>>Any ideas anyone? Are there any kerberos related benchmarks available
>>(could not find any), maybe this issue is not a problem, just a
>>limitation and we have to add more servers?
>>
>>Thanks!
>>
>>best regards
>>Peter
>
>Peter,
>
>I have pretty much the same setup as you - just 3.1.8, though only 700
>users.
>
>Have you disabled the replay cache:
>http://wiki.squid-cache.org/ConfigExamples/Authenticate/Kerberos
>But beware of a memory leak (depending on your libs of course):
>http://squid-web-proxy-cache.1019090.n4.nabble.com/Intermittent-SquidKerbAu
>th-Cannot-allocate-memory-td3179036.html. I have a call outstanding with
>RH at the moment.
>

Could you try disabling the replay cache ? Did it improve the load ?

>Are your rules repeating requesting authentication unnecessarily when it's
>already been done? Amos was very helpful when advising on this (search for
>the post..)
>
>8000 users.. Only 30 helpers? What does cachemgr say about used negotiate
>helper stats, timings/sec etc.
>Is your krb5.conf using the nearest kdc in it's own site etc?
>

The kdc is only important for the client. The server (squid) never talks to
the kdc.

>Some load testers out there incorporate Kerberos load testing.
>
>Just my thoughts..
>
>Nick
>
>
>>
>
>
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Received on Sat Feb 12 2011 - 13:11:06 MST

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