iperf3 Transfer Summary shows NULL above certain point

[Jeff Lane ]

When running iperf3 for sufficiently long times or or for sufficiently large amounts of data transferred, the Transfer Summary shows NULL for the amount of data transferred.

This seems to be triggered once you hit over 1 terabyte of data transferred. It was described and fixed this is bug upstream:

https://github.com/esnet/iperf/issues/402

Please backport this fix into Ubuntu.

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

I was able to confirm/validate the failure on a set of LXC containers:

bladernr@xenial:~$ iperf3 -c 10.148.80.151 -i 60 -n 999G
Connecting to host 10.148.80.151, port 5201
[ 4] local 10.148.80.13 port 44408 connected to 10.148.80.151 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr Cwnd
[ 4] 0.00-60.00 sec 464 GBytes 66.4 Gbits/sec 236 3.00 MBytes
[ 4] 60.00-120.00 sec 456 GBytes 65.3 Gbits/sec 0 3.00 MBytes
[ 4] 120.00-130.09 sec 78.8 GBytes 67.1 Gbits/sec 0 3.00 MBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr
[ 4] 0.00-130.09 sec 999 GBytes 66.0 Gbits/sec 236 sender
[ 4] 0.00-130.09 sec 999 GBytes 66.0 Gbits/sec receiver

bladernr@xenial:~$ iperf3 -c 10.148.80.151 -i 60 -n 1500G
Connecting to host 10.148.80.151, port 5201
[ 4] local 10.148.80.13 port 44538 connected to 10.148.80.151 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr Cwnd
[ 4] 0.00-60.00 sec 456 GBytes 65.3 Gbits/sec 2851 1.16 MBytes
[ 4] 60.00-120.00 sec 469 GBytes 67.1 Gbits/sec 66 2.48 MBytes
q[ 4] 120.00-180.00 sec 469 GBytes 67.2 Gbits/sec 137 3.02 MBytes
[ 4] 180.00-193.34 sec 106 GBytes 68.2 Gbits/sec 0 3.02 MBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr
[ 4] 0.00-193.34 sec 0.00 (null)s 66.6 Gbits/sec 3054 sender
[ 4] 0.00-193.34 sec 0.00 (null)s 66.6 Gbits/sec receiver

bladernr@xenial:~$ apt-cache policy iperf3
iperf3:
  Installed: 3.0.11-1
  Candidate: 3.0.11-1
  Version table:
 *** 3.0.11-1 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

This also affects bionic:
bladernr@xenial:/etc/apt/preferences.d$ iperf3 -c 10.148.80.151 -i 60 -n 1500G
Connecting to host 10.148.80.151, port 5201
[ 4] local 10.148.80.13 port 44836 connected to 10.148.80.151 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr Cwnd
[ 4] 0.00-60.00 sec 457 GBytes 65.4 Gbits/sec 2546 1.77 MBytes
[ 4] 60.00-120.00 sec 482 GBytes 69.1 Gbits/sec 89 3.04 MBytes
[ 4] 120.00-180.00 sec 478 GBytes 68.4 Gbits/sec 25 3.01 MBytes
[ 4] 180.00-193.22 sec 82.7 GBytes 53.7 Gbits/sec 1091 1.60 MBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr
[ 4] 0.00-193.22 sec 0.00 (null)s 66.7 Gbits/sec 3751 sender
[ 4] 0.00-193.22 sec 0.00 (null)s 66.7 Gbits/sec receiver

iperf Done.

bladernr@xenial:/etc/apt/preferences.d$ apt-cache policy iperf3
iperf3:
  Installed: 3.1.3-1
  Candidate: 3.1.3-1
  Version table:
 *** 3.1.3-1 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.0.11-1 -10
        -10 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/universe amd64 Packages
bladernr@xenial:/etc/apt/preferences.d$ apt-cache policy libiperf0
libiperf0:
  Installed: 3.1.3-1
  Candidate: 3.1.3-1
  Version table:
 *** 3.1.3-1 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.0.11-1 -10
        -10 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/universe amd64 Packages

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

This is resolved in Cosmic:
bladernr@cosmic:~$ iperf3 -c 10.148.80.151 -n 1500G -i 60
Connecting to host 10.148.80.151, port 5201
[ 5] local 10.148.80.5 port 58834 connected to 10.148.80.151 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd
[ 5] 0.00-60.00 sec 447 GBytes 64.0 Gbits/sec 845 1.04 MBytes
[ 5] 60.00-120.00 sec 435 GBytes 62.3 Gbits/sec 653 898 KBytes
[ 5] 120.00-180.00 sec 444 GBytes 63.5 Gbits/sec 47 3.01 MBytes
[ 5] 180.00-203.80 sec 174 GBytes 62.8 Gbits/sec 0 3.01 MBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-203.80 sec 1.46 TBytes 63.2 Gbits/sec 1545 sender
[ 5] 0.00-203.80 sec 1.46 TBytes 63.2 Gbits/sec receiver

iperf Done.
bladernr@cosmic:~$ apt-cache policy iperf3
iperf3:
  Installed: 3.6-2
  Candidate: 3.6-2
  Version table:
 *** 3.6-2 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu cosmic/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Oibaf (oibaf)]

Fixed since Ubuntu 18.10. Nomination remains eventually active for older Ubuntu.