Bug #693626 “Infinite spam of reports” : Bugs : Net Responsibility

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Dustin Miller (dustbiz) wrote on 2010-12-23:

#1

Peter, my guess is that you're encountering the default behavior when you haven't specified your time between reports. For instance, when I contacted roggan87 (the current developer) about a way I could test automatic reporting without having to wait 24 hours (which I assumed was the minimum amount possible, since in configuration on the website you enter in the number of days you want between each report), he said that the easiest way would be to set the configuration value to '0', which he said should automatically generate reports every ten minutes. I've never actually tried it, but I assume it works. So, as a first step, I would suggest logging into the website, checking/changing your configuration settings however you want and then saving and logging out. If you've already done that, then you will still need to run your configuration from your computer in order to sync your settings from the website to your computer. This may fix this particular 'bug', although I'm not completely certain this is not related to using openSUSE rather than Ubuntu. You may actually find that running the configuration to sync your website and computer settings also clears up your other bug too, but I can't say for sure. By the way, once you've been able to get the program running in openSUSE, the development team would be interested in the details on what you needed to do, if you wouldn't mind posting that on the forum (linked from the main page of Net Responsibility). That way, they can eventually make that information available to other users as well.

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Peter (weisspe) wrote on 2010-12-26:

#2

I checked the website and it was set at 7 days, but I changed that to 1 just so that there would be something to update. Then I did the configuration thing on my end. I started the daemon with 'sudo net-responsibility-daemon' and let it run for a bit. It continued to email reports every 10 mintues. I then checked /etc/net-responsiblity.conf and found the line 'report_frequency: 1' so I know it's set to email reports daily. I suppose this means that the 0 setting will email reports every 10 mintues and that for some reason it's not reading the configuration at all. I don't know if changing the dependency names made a difference. I listed them below with for form:

original/Ubuntu ==> modified/openSUSE

If you have any ideas (even somewhat random long shots) then I'd be glad to try them and give feedback. I don't know any ruby, but I am a programmer in training so I can look up ruby stuff and try that if need be. I also don't know how RPM spec files work, but if we make progress I would love to learn and open a net-responsibility page with openSUSE's build utilities to test and host an RPM for different distributions.

Dependencies renamed:
ruby ==> ruby
libsqlite3-ruby ==> rubygem-sqlite3
libdaemonize-ruby | libdaemons-ruby ==> rubygem-daemons
dsniff ==> dsniff
python-yaml ==> python-yaml
rubygems ==> rubygems
zip ==> zip
python-wxgtk2.8 ==> wxPython2.8-gtk2-unicode

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Dustin Miller (dustbiz) wrote on 2010-12-27:

#3

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I probably know less about programming than you do, but here are a few things I would consider checking out:

1. First, I wouldn't be surprised if your ongoing problems with your manual installation are for a similar reason to why you couldn't get a package built. I don't know much about building packages, but I think I would focus first on trying to figure out how to take the source code (or another package?) and build/convert it into an installation package that will work with OpenSuse. I suggest this as a first step, since if you're successful here, I'm guessing that the building of the package and then the installation of it will automatically take care of a lot of stuff that could be missed if you're doing a manual installation.

2. In my notes for the program from a year or so ago, I see that an option called '--debug' can be added to a command, which is supposed to then generate a lot more details about what the program did, errors generated, etc. Assuming this is still included in the latest versions, you might find it helpful to add that to your daemon command and/or your report command to see if you can tell from the output where the problem might be. For convenience or to make sure you get all the information (if your terminal space is limited) you may want to send the output of the command to its own file. One example I saw that someone used (I think in Ubuntu) is
sudo net-responsibility-report --debug > net-responsibility-log 2>&1
which puts the info into a file named 'net-responsibility-log' (I haven't checked out what the '2>&1' at the end does, but it might have something to do with how the file gets formatted or something?). One thing to keep in mind if you decide you want to post some/all of this info here or on the NR forum is that this option will print out some sensitive info like email addresses, username, password, etc., so you'll want to sanitize the info before you post it. Also, if you do make a separate file, it's possible that it will be owned by root, so you'll need to use sudo (or it's equivalent temporary administrator privileges command) to delete it when you want to.

3. Not sure if this will work for the NR file structure in OpenSuse, but you may be able to look for error messages in /var/log/syslog as well with the following terminal command:
grep net-responsibility /var/log/syslog | less

4. What version of NR are you using (this can be checked with the command: net-responsibility-daemon --version)? Your best chance is to use whatever the latest versions are on the NR website. Currently that would be the 2.0a4 alpha version (although there's a 2.0 beta/stable version in the works) or the 0.5.0 beta version. If you just can't get the 2.0a4 version to run, you might want to try the 0.5.0 version. Don't know if OpenSuse can use RPM packages, but I noticed that the Download page has an RPM package for 0.5.0, but not for 2.0a4. By the way if an RPM will work on your system, someone mentioned on the forum once that 'alien' can possibly be used to convert a DEB to an RPM. I haven't used alien myself, but it might be worth checking out when looking into #1 above.

5. In case it's helpful, my notes show that Ruby is...

I probably know less about programming than you do, but here are a few things I would consider checking out:

1. First, I wouldn't be surprised if your ongoing problems with your manual installation are for a similar reason to why you couldn't get a package built. I don't know much about building packages, but I think I would focus first on trying to figure out how to take the source code (or another package?) and build/convert it into an installation package that will work with OpenSuse. I suggest this as a first step, since if you're successful here, I'm guessing that the building of the package and then the installation of it will automatically take care of a lot of stuff that could be missed if you're doing a manual installation.

2. In my notes for the program from a year or so ago, I see that an option called '--debug' can be added to a command, which is supposed to then generate a lot more details about what the program did, errors generated, etc. Assuming this is still included in the latest versions, you might find it helpful to add that to your daemon command and/or your report command to see if you can tell from the output where the problem might be. For convenience or to make sure you get all the information (if your terminal space is limited) you may want to send the output of the command to its own file. One example I saw that someone used (I think in Ubuntu) is
sudo net-responsibility-report --debug > net-responsibility-log 2>&1
which puts the info into a file named 'net-responsibility-log' (I haven't checked out what the '2>&1' at the end does, but it might have something to do with how the file gets formatted or something?). One thing to keep in mind if you decide you want to post some/all of this info here or on the NR forum is that this option will print out some sensitive info like email addresses, username, password, etc., so you'll want to sanitize the info before you post it. Also, if you do make a separate file, it's possible that it will be owned by root, so you'll need to use sudo (or it's equivalent temporary administrator privileges command) to delete it when you want to.

3. Not sure if this will work for the NR file structure in OpenSuse, but you may be able to look for error messages in /var/log/syslog as well with the following terminal command:
grep net-responsibility /var/log/syslog | less

4. What version of NR are you using (this can be checked with the command: net-responsibility-daemon --version)? Your best chance is to use whatever the latest versions are on the NR website. Currently that would be the 2.0a4 alpha version (although there's a 2.0 beta/stable version in the works) or the 0.5.0 beta version. If you just can't get the 2.0a4 version to run, you might want to try the 0.5.0 version. Don't know if OpenSuse can use RPM packages, but I noticed that the Download page has an RPM package for 0.5.0, but not for 2.0a4. By the way if an RPM will work on your system, someone mentioned on the forum once that 'alien' can possibly be used to convert a DEB to an RPM. I haven't used alien myself, but it might be worth checking out when looking into #1 above.

5. In case it's helpful, my notes show that Ruby is the basic programming language, and SQLite3 is used for the database part of the program. Python is also used for part of the program.

6. I noticed on your other bug report that to test the shut-down of the program, you used a command including 'net-responsibility' as the thing you were trying to stop/start. The notes I have suggest that it might be possible you need to use 'net-responsibility-daemon' in the command instead. I think that's the core part (does the monitoring and logging) of the whole 'net-responsibility' package that runs at a fairly 'low level' and is what would trigger your shut-down/interrupt reports.

7. By entering the command
net-responsibility-daemon --help
you can see various helpful options (some of which I've mentioned above) for information, configuration, and troubleshooting. I think the '--nodaemon' option is helpful basically because it makes it easier to see what the program is actually doing, so you can figure out what's going wrong, etc.

8. I checked out the FAQs on the NR website, and found some info that might work as a temporary workaround for you as far as the timing of reports. First, it looks like the '0' setting is now meant to actually turn off automatic reporting, so I guess you could try that and if it is still sending them every ten minutes, then I'm guessing that's a pretty good indication that for some reason there's a disconnect between the program and the config settings. The workaround to suggest is to use the 'cron' package with the command 'net-responsibility-report' to have the reports sent automatically at whatever intervals you want. I haven't used cron myself, but I think it's just a program that schedules the running of other programs or commands. The only trouble with this is that it doesn't give you a way to shut off the automatic reports (if the '0' in your config settings doesn't work). Also, if you use cron, you'll need to give it root privileges, I think.

9. On the issue of empty reports and the error in your other bug, do you have at least one blacklist and one whitelist selected in your config settings? I think some people have found that they need to have at least these for a proper report to be generated. Also, another simple test besides the shutdown one is just to do a bit of internet surfing. If neither one of these tests is working to get any report content, then my best guess would be that the program is having some sort of problem accessing the database (thus, the SQLite3 error, and no reported content).

Apologies for any advice or ideas that are obviously unhelpful due to my limited knowledge of programming. Hopefully this will give you something to work with to figure it out, and it's possible that the main developer (roggan87) or another developer/user with more programming experience could help you out with further questions you have, or with assistance in parsing any debugging output you get.

Net Responsibility

Infinite spam of reports

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