Willy Tarreau [Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:55:47 +0000 (22:55 +0100)]
[MINOR] tcp_request: let the caller take care of errors and timeouts
tcp_request is not meant to decide how an error or a timeout has to
be handled. It must just apply it rules. Now that the error checks
have been added to the session, we don't need to check them anymore
in tcp_request_inspect(), which will only consider the shutdown which
may be the result of such an error.
That makes a lot more sense since tcp_request is not really waiting
for a request.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:34:05 +0000 (22:34 +0100)]
[BUG] session: errors were not reported in termination flags in TCP mode
In order to get termination flags properly updated, the session was
relying a bit too much on http_return_srv_error() which is http-centric.
A generic srv_error function was implemented in the session in order to
catch all connection abort situations. It was then noticed that a request
abort during a connection attempt was not reported, which is now fixed.
Read and write errors/timeouts were not logged either. It was necessary
to add those tests at 4 new locations.
Now it looks like everything is correctly logged. Most likely some error
checking code could now be removed from some analysers.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:49:00 +0000 (21:49 +0100)]
[BUG] connect timeout is in the stream interface, not the buffer
The connect timeout was not properly detected due to the fact that
it was not correctly initialized. It must be set as the stream interface
timeout, not the buffer's write timeout.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:23:16 +0000 (15:23 +0100)]
[CLEANUP] config: catch and report some possibly wrong rule ordering
There are some configurations in which redirect rules are declared
after use_backend rules. We can also find "block" rules after any
of these ones. The processing sequence is :
- block
- redirect
- use_backend
So as of now we try to detect wrong ordering to warn the user about
a possibly undesired behaviour.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:51:53 +0000 (14:51 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] reverse internal proxy declaration order to match configuration
People are regularly complaining that proxies are linked in reverse
order when reading the stats. This is now definitely fixed because
the proxy order is now fixed to match configuration order.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:43:58 +0000 (14:43 +0100)]
[MINOR] tcp-inspect: permit the use of no-delay inspection
Sometimes it may make sense to be able to immediately apply a verdict
without waiting at all. It was not possible because no inspect-delay
meant no inspection at all. This is now fixed.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:06:41 +0000 (14:06 +0100)]
[MINOR] cfgparse: set backends to "balance roundrobin" by default
When a backend has no LB algo specified and is not in dispatch, proxy
nor transparent mode, use "balance roundrobin" by default instead of
complaining. This will be particularly useful with stats and redirects.
Willy Tarreau [Mon, 9 Mar 2009 21:40:57 +0000 (22:40 +0100)]
[BUG] stream_sock: write timeout must be updated when forwarding !
When data are forwarded between socket, we must update the output
socket's write timeout. This was forgotten, causing sessions to
unexpectedly expire during long posts.
Willy Tarreau [Mon, 9 Mar 2009 00:03:42 +0000 (01:03 +0100)]
[RELEASE] Released version 1.3.16-rc1
Released version 1.3.16-rc1 with the following main changes :
- appsessions: cleanup DEBUG_HASH and initialize request_counter
- [MINOR] acl: add new keyword "connslots"
- [MINOR] cfgparse: fix off-by 2 in error message size
- [BUILD] fix build with gcc 4.3
- [BUILD] fix MANDIR default location to match documentation
- [TESTS] add a debug patch to help trigger the stats bug
- [BUG] Flush buffers also where there are exactly 0 bytes left
- [MINOR] Allow to specify a domain for a cookie
- [BUG/CLEANUP] cookiedomain -> cookie_domain rename + free(p->cookie_domain)
- [MEDIUM] Fix memory freeing at exit
- [MEDIUM] Fix memory freeing at exit, part 2
- [BUG] Fix listen & more of 2 couples <ip>:<port>
- [DOC] remove buggy comment for use_backend
- [CRITICAL] fix server state tracking: it was O(n!) instead of O(n)
- [MEDIUM] add support for URI hash depth and length limits
- [MINOR] permit renaming of x-forwarded-for header
- [BUILD] fix Makefile.bsd and Makefile.osx for stream_interface
- [BUILD] Haproxy won't compile if DEBUG_FULL is defined
- [MEDIUM] upgrade to ebtree v4.0
- [DOC] update the README file with new build options
- [MEDIUM] reduce risk of event starvation in ev_sepoll
- [MEDIUM] detect streaming buffers and tag them as such
- [MEDIUM] add support for conditional HTTP redirection
- [BUILD] make install should depend on haproxy not "all"
- [DEBUG] add a TRACE macro to facilitate runtime data extraction
- [BUG] event pollers must not wait if a task exists in the run queue
- [BUG] queue management: wake oldest request in queues
- [BUG] log: reported queue position was offed-by-one
- [BUG] fix the dequeuing logic to ensure that all requests get served
- [DOC] documentation for the "retries" parameter was missing.
- [MEDIUM] implement a monotonic internal clock
- [MEDIUM] further improve monotonic clock by check forward jumps
- [OPTIM] add branch prediction hints in list manipulations
- [MAJOR] replace ultree with ebtree in wait-queues
- [BUG] we could segfault during exit while freeing uri_auths
- [BUG] wqueue: perform proper timeout comparisons with wrapping values
- [MINOR] introduce now_ms, the current date in milliseconds
- [BUG] disable buffer read timeout when reading stats
- [MEDIUM] rework the wait queue mechanism
- [BUILD] change declaration of base64tab to fix build with Intel C++
- [OPTIM] shrink wake_expired_tasks() by using task_wakeup()
- [MAJOR] use an ebtree instead of a list for the run queue
- [MEDIUM] introduce task->nice and boot access to statistics
- [OPTIM] task_queue: assume most consecutive timers are equal
- [BUILD] silent a warning in unlikely() with gcc 4.x
- [MAJOR] convert all expiration timers from timeval to ticks
- [BUG] use_backend would not correctly consider "unless"
- [TESTS] added test-acl.cfg to test some ACL combinations
- [MEDIUM] add support for configuration keyword registration
- [MEDIUM] modularize the global "stats" keyword configuration parser
- [MINOR] cfgparse: add support for warnings in external functions
- [MEDIUM] modularize the "timeout" keyword configuration parser
- [MAJOR] implement tcp request content inspection
- [MINOR] acl: add a new parsing function: parse_dotted_ver
- [MINOR] acl: add req_ssl_ver in TCP, to match an SSL version
- [CLEANUP] remove unused include/types/client.h
- [CLEANUP] remove many #include <types/xxx> from C files
- [CLEANUP] remove dependency on obsolete INTBITS macro
- [DOC] document the new "tcp-request" keyword and associated ACLs
- [MINOR] acl: add REQ_CONTENT to the list of default acls
- [MEDIUM] acl: permit fetch() functions to set the result themselves
- [MEDIUM] acl: get rid of dummy values in always_true/always_false
- [MINOR] acl: add the "wait_end" acl verb
- [MEDIUM] acl: enforce ACL type checking
- [MEDIUM] acl: set types on all currently known ACL verbs
- [MEDIUM] acl: when possible, report the name and requirements of ACLs in warnings
- [CLEANUP] remove 65 useless NULL checks before free
- [MEDIUM] memory: update pool_free2() to support NULL pointers
- [MEDIUM] buffers: ensure buffer_shut* are properly called upon shutdowns
- [MEDIUM] process_srv: rely on buffer flags for client shutdown
- [MEDIUM] process_srv: don't rely at all on client state
- [MEDIUM] process_cli: don't rely at all on server state
- [BUG] fix segfault with url_param + check_post
- [BUG] server timeout was not considered in some circumstances
- [BUG] client timeout incorrectly rearmed while waiting for server
- [MAJOR] kill CL_STINSPECT and CL_STHEADERS (step 1)
- [MAJOR] get rid of SV_STANALYZE (step 2)
- [MEDIUM] simplify and centralize request timeout cancellation and request forwarding
- [MAJOR] completely separate HTTP and TCP states on the request path
- [BUG] fix recently introduced loop when client closes early
- [MAJOR] get rid of the SV_STHEADERS state
- [MAJOR] better separation of response processing and server state
- [MAJOR] clearly separate HTTP response processing from TCP server state
- [MEDIUM] remove unused references to {CL|SV}_STSHUT*
- [MINOR] term_trace: add better instrumentations to trace the code
- [BUG] ev_sepoll: closed file descriptors could persist in the spec list
- [BUG] process_response must not enable the read FD
- [BUG] buffers: remove BF_MAY_CONNECT and fix forwarding issue
- [BUG] process_response: do not touch srv_state
- [BUG] maintain_proxies must not disable backends
- [CLEANUP] get rid of BF_SHUT*_PENDING
- [MEDIUM] buffers: add BF_EMPTY and BF_FULL to remove dependency on req/rep->l
- [MAJOR] process_session: rely only on buffer flags
- [MEDIUM] use buffer->wex instead of buffer->cex for connect timeout
- [MEDIUM] centralize buffer timeout checks at the top of process_session
- [MINOR] ensure the termination flags are set by process_xxx
- [MEDIUM] session: move the analysis bit field to the buffer
- [OPTIM] process_cli/process_srv: reduce the number of tests
- [BUG] regparm is broken on gcc < 3
- [BUILD] fix warning in proto_tcp.c with gcc >= 4
- [MEDIUM] merge inspect_exp and txn->exp into request buffer
- [BUG] process_cli/process_srv: don't call shutdown when already done
- [BUG] process_request: HTTP body analysis must return zero if missing data
- [TESTS] test-fsm: 22 regression tests for state machines
- [BUG] Fix empty X-Forwarded-For header name when set in defaults section
- [BUG] fix harmless but wrong fd insertion sequence
- [MEDIUM] make it possible for analysers to follow the whole session
- [MAJOR] rework of the server FSM
- [OPTIM] remove useless fd_set(read) upon shutdown(write)
- [MEDIUM] massive cleanup of process_srv()
- [MEDIUM] second level of code cleanup for process_srv_data
- [MEDIUM] third cleanup and optimization of process_srv_data()
- [MEDIUM] process_srv_data: ensure that we always correctly re-arm timeouts
- [MEDIUM] stream_sock_process_data moved to stream_sock.c
- [MAJOR] make the client side use stream_sock_process_data()
- [MEDIUM] split stream_sock_process_data
- [OPTIM] stream_sock_read must check for null-reads more often
- [MINOR] only call flow analysers when their read side is connected.
- [MEDIUM] reintroduce BF_HIJACK with produce_content
- [MINOR] re-arrange buffer flags and rename some of them
- [MINOR] do not check for BF_SHUTR when computing write timeout
- [OPTIM] ev_sepoll: detect newly created FDs and check them once
- [OPTIM] reduce the number of calls to task_wakeup()
- [OPTIM] force inlining of large functions with gcc >= 3
- [MEDIUM] indicate a reason for a task wakeup
- [MINOR] change type of fdtab[]->owner to void*
- [MAJOR] make stream sockets aware of the stream interface
- [MEDIUM] stream interface: add the ->shutw method as well as in and out buffers
- [MEDIUM] buffers: add BF_READ_ATTACHED and BF_ANA_TIMEOUT
- [MEDIUM] process_session: make use of the new buffer flags
- [CLEANUP] process_session: move debug outputs out of the critical loop
- [MEDIUM] move QUEUE and TAR timers to stream interfaces
- [OPTIM] add compiler hints in tick_is_expired()
- [MINOR] add buffer_check_timeouts() to check what timeouts have fired.
- [MEDIUM] use buffer_check_timeouts instead of stream_sock_check_timeouts()
- [MINOR] add an expiration flag to the stream_sock_interface
- [MAJOR] migrate the connection logic to stream interface
- [MAJOR] add a connection error state to the stream_interface
- [MEDIUM] add the SN_CURR_SESS flag to the session to track open sessions
- [MEDIUM] continue layering cleanups.
- [MEDIUM] stream_interface: added a DISconnected state between CON/EST and CLO
- [MEDIUM] remove stream_sock_update_data()
- [MINOR] maintain a global session list in order to ease debugging
- [BUG] shutw must imply close during a connect
- [MEDIUM] process shutw during connection attempt
- [MEDIUM] make the stream interface control the SHUT{R,W} bits
- [MAJOR] complete layer4/7 separation
- [CLEANUP] move the session-related functions to session.c
- [MINOR] call session->do_log() for logging
- [MINOR] replace the ambiguous client_return function by stream_int_return
- [MINOR] replace client_retnclose() with stream_int_retnclose()
- [MINOR] replace srv_close_with_err() with http_server_error()
- [MEDIUM] make the http server error function a pointer in the session
- [CLEANUP] session.c: removed some migration left-overs in sess_establish()
- [MINOR] stream_sock_data_finish() should not expose fd
- [MEDIUM] extract TCP request processing from HTTP
- [MEDIUM] extract the HTTP tarpit code from process_request().
- [MEDIUM] move the HTTP request body analyser out of process_request().
- [MEDIUM] rename process_request to http_process_request
- [BUG] fix forgotten server session counter
- [MINOR] declare process_session in session.h, not proto_http.h
- [MEDIUM] first pass of lifting to proto_uxst.c:uxst_event_accept()
- [MINOR] add an analyser code for UNIX stats request
- [MINOR] pre-set analyser flags on the listener at registration time
- [BUG] do not forward close from cons to prod with analysers
- [MEDIUM] ensure that sock->shutw() also closes read for init states
- [MINOR] add an analyser state in struct session
- [MAJOR] make unix sockets work again with stats
- [MEDIUM] remove cli_fd, srv_fd, cli_state and srv_state from the session
- [MINOR] move the listener reference from fd to session
- [MEDIUM] reference the current hijack function in the buffer itself
- [MINOR] slightly rebalance stats_dump_{raw,http}
- [MINOR] add a new back-reference type : struct bref
- [MINOR] add back-references to sessions for later use by a dumper.
- [MEDIUM] add support for "show sess" in unix stats socket
- [BUG] do not release the connection slot during a retry
- [BUG] dynamic connection throttling could return a max of zero conns
- [BUG] do not try to pause backends during reload
- [BUG] ensure that listeners from disabled proxies are correctly unbound.
- [BUG] acl-related keywords are not allowed in defaults sections
- [BUG] cookie capture is declared in the frontend but checked on the backend
- [BUG] critical errors should be reported even in daemon mode
- [MINOR] redirect: add support for the "drop-query" option
- [MINOR] redirect: add support for "set-cookie" and "clear-cookie"
- [MINOR] redirect: in prefix mode a "/" means not to change the URI
- [BUG] do not dequeue requests on a dead server
- [BUG] do not dequeue the backend's pending connections on a dead server
- [MINOR] stats: indicate if a task is running in "show sess"
- [BUG] check timeout must not be changed if timeout.check is not set
- [BUG] "option transparent" is for backend, not frontend !
- [MINOR] transfer errors were not reported anymore in data phase
- [MEDIUM] add a send limit to a buffer
- [MEDIUM] don't report buffer timeout when there is I/O activity
- [MEDIUM] indicate when we don't care about read timeout
- [MINOR] add flags to indicate when a stream interface is waiting for space/data
- [MEDIUM] enable inter-stream_interface wakeup calls
- [MAJOR] implement autonomous inter-socket forwarding
- [MINOR] add the splice_len member to the buffer struct in preparation of splice support
- [MEDIUM] stream_sock: factor out the return path in case of no-writes
- [MEDIUM] i/o: rework ->to_forward and ->send_max
- [OPTIM] stream_sock: do not ask for polling on EAGAIN if we have read
- [OPTIM] buffer: replace rlim by max_len
- [OPTIM] stream_sock: factor out the buffer full handling out of the loop
- [CLEANUP] replace a few occurrences of (flags & X) && !(flags & Y)
- [CLEANUP] stream_sock: move the write-nothing condition out of the loop
- [MEDIUM] split stream_sock_write() into callback and core functions
- [MEDIUM] stream_sock_read: call ->chk_snd whenever there are data pending
- [MINOR] stream_sock: fix a few wrong empty calculations
- [MEDIUM] stream_sock: try to send pending data on chk_snd()
- [MINOR] global.maxpipes: add the ability to reserve file descriptors for pipes
- [MEDIUM] splice: add configuration options and set global.maxpipes
- [MINOR] introduce structures required to support Linux kernel splicing
- [MEDIUM] add definitions for Linux kernel splicing
- [MAJOR] complete support for linux 2.6 kernel splicing
- [BUG] reserve some pipes for backends with splice enabled
- [MEDIUM] splice: add hints to support older buggy kernels
- [MEDIUM] introduce pipe pools
- [MEDIUM] splice: make use of pipe pools
- [STATS] report pipe usage in the statistics
- [OPTIM] make global.maxpipes default to global.maxconn/4 when not specified
- [BUILD] fix snapshot date extraction with negative timezones
- [MEDIUM] move global tuning options to the global structure
- [MEDIUM] splice: add the global "nosplice" option
- [BUILD] add USE_LINUX_SPLICE to enable LINUX_SPLICE on linux 2.6
- [BUG] we must not exit if protocol binding only returns a warning
- [MINOR] add support for bind interface name
- [BUG] inform the user when root is expected but not set
- [MEDIUM] add support for source interface binding
- [MEDIUM] add support for source interface binding at the server level
- [MEDIUM] implement bind-process to limit service presence by process
- [DOC] document maxpipes, nosplice, option splice-{auto,request,response}
- [DOC] filled the logging section of the configuration manual
- [DOC] document HTTP status codes
- [DOC] document a few missing info about errorfile
- [BUG] fix random memory corruption using "show sess"
- [BUG] fix unix socket processing of interrupted output
- [DOC] add diagrams of queuing and future ACL design
- [BUILD] proto_http did not build on gcc-2.95
- [BUG] the "source" keyword must first clear optional settings
- [BUG] global.tune.maxaccept must be limited even in mono-process mode
- [MINOR] ensure that http_msg_analyzer updates pointer to invalid char
- [MEDIUM] store a complete dump of request and response errors in proxies
- [MEDIUM] implement error dump on unix socket with "show errors"
- [DOC] document "show errors"
- [MINOR] errors dump must use user-visible date, not internal date.
- [MINOR] time: add __usec_to_1024th to convert usecs to 1024th of second
- [MINOR] add curr_sec_ms and curr_sec_ms_scaled for current second.
- [MEDIUM] measure and report session rate on frontend, backends and servers
- [BUG] the "connslots" keyword was matched as "connlots"
- [MINOR] acl: add 2 new verbs: fe_sess_rate and be_sess_rate
- [MEDIUM] implement "rate-limit sessions" for the frontend
- [BUG] interface binding: length must include the trailing zero
- [BUG] typo in timeout error reporting : report *res and not *err
- [OPTIM] maintain_proxies: only wake up when the frontend will be ready
- [OPTIM] rate-limit: cleaner behaviour on low rates and reduce consumption
- [BUG] switch server-side stream interface to close in case of abort
- [CLEANUP] remove last references to term_trace
- [OPTIM] freq_ctr: do not rotate the counters when reading
- [BUG] disable any analysers for monitoring requests
- [BUG] rate-limit in defaults section was ignored
- [BUG] task: fix handling of duplicate keys
- [OPTIM] task: don't unlink a task from a wait queue when waking it up
- [OPTIM] displace tasks in the wait queue only if absolutely needed
- [MEDIUM] minor update to the task api: let the scheduler queue itself
- [BUG] event_accept() must always wake the task up, even in health mode
- [CLEANUP] task: distinguish between clock ticks and timers
- [OPTIM] task: reduce the number of calls to task_queue()
- [OPTIM] do not re-check req buffer when only response has changed
- [CLEANUP] don't enable kernel splicing when socket is closed
- [CLEANUP] buffer_flush() was misleading, rename it as buffer_erase
- [MINOR] buffers: implement buffer_flush()
- [MEDIUM] rearrange forwarding condition to enable splice during analysis
- [BUILD] build fixes for Solaris
- [BUILD] proto_http did not build on gcc-2.95 (again)
- [CONTRIB] halog: fast log parser for haproxy
- [CONTRIB] halog: faster fgets() and add support for percentile reporting
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 8 Mar 2009 20:38:23 +0000 (21:38 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] rearrange forwarding condition to enable splice during analysis
The forwarding condition was not very clear. We would only enable
forwarding when send_max is zero, and we would only splice when no
analyser is installed. In fact we want to enable forward when there
is no analyser and we want to splice at soon as there is data to
forward, regardless of the analysers.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 8 Mar 2009 18:20:25 +0000 (19:20 +0100)]
[OPTIM] do not re-check req buffer when only response has changed
In process_session(), we used to re-run through all the evaluation
loop when only the response had changed. Now we carefully check in
this order :
- changes to the stream interfaces (only SI_ST_DIS)
- changes to the request buffer flags
- changes to the response buffer flags
And we branch to the appropriate section. This saves significant
CPU cycles, which is important since process_session() is one of
the major CPU eaters.
The same changes have been applied to uxst_process_session().
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 8 Mar 2009 15:35:27 +0000 (16:35 +0100)]
[OPTIM] task: reduce the number of calls to task_queue()
Most of the time, task_queue() will immediately return. By extracting
the preliminary checks and putting them in an inline function, we can
significantly reduce the number of calls to the function itself, and
most of the tests can be optimized away due to the caller's context.
Another minor improvement in process_runnable_tasks() consisted in
taking benefit from the processor's branch prediction unit by making
a special case of the process_session() callback which is by far the
most common one.
All this improved performance by about 1%, mainly during the call
from process_runnable_tasks().
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 8 Mar 2009 14:53:06 +0000 (15:53 +0100)]
[CLEANUP] task: distinguish between clock ticks and timers
Timers are unsigned and used as tree positions. Ticks are signed and
used as absolute date within current time frame. While the two are
normally equal (except zero), it's important not to confuse them in
the code as they are not interchangeable.
We add two inline functions to turn each one into the other.
The comments have also been moved to the proper location, as it was
not easy to understand what was a tick and what was a timer unit.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 8 Mar 2009 08:38:41 +0000 (09:38 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] minor update to the task api: let the scheduler queue itself
All the tasks callbacks had to requeue the task themselves, and update
a global timeout. This was not convenient at all. Now the API has been
simplified. The tasks callbacks only have to update their expire timer,
and return either a pointer to the task or NULL if the task has been
deleted. The scheduler will take care of requeuing the task at the
proper place in the wait queue.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 8 Mar 2009 06:46:27 +0000 (07:46 +0100)]
[OPTIM] displace tasks in the wait queue only if absolutely needed
We don't need to remove then add tasks in the wait queue every time we
update a timeout. We only need to do that when the new timeout is earlier
than previous one. We can rely on wake_expired_tasks() to perform the
proper checks and bounce the misplaced tasks in the rare case where this
happens. The motivation behind this is that we very rarely hit timeouts,
so we save a lot of CPU cycles by moving the tasks very rarely. This now
means we can also find tasks with expiration date set to eternity in the
queue, and that is not a problem.
Willy Tarreau [Sat, 7 Mar 2009 16:25:21 +0000 (17:25 +0100)]
[OPTIM] task: don't unlink a task from a wait queue when waking it up
In many situations, we wake a task on an I/O event, then queue it
exactly where it was. This is a real waste because we delete/insert
tasks into the wait queue for nothing. The only reason for this is
that there was only one tree node in the task struct.
By adding another tree node, we can have one tree for the timers
(wait queue) and one tree for the priority (run queue). That way,
we can have a task both in the run queue and wait queue at the
same time. The wait queue now really holds timers, which is what
it was designed for.
The net gain is at least 1 delete/insert cycle per session, and up
to 2-3 depending on the workload, since we save one cycle each time
the expiration date is not changed during a wake up.
Willy Tarreau [Sat, 7 Mar 2009 23:26:28 +0000 (00:26 +0100)]
[BUG] task: fix handling of duplicate keys
A bug was introduced with the ebtree-based scheduler. It seldom causes
some timeouts to last longer than required if they hit an expiration
date which is the same as the last queued date, is also part of a
duplicate tree without being the top of the tree. In this case, the
task will not be expired until after the duplicate tree has been
flushed.
It is easier to reproduce by setting a very short client timeout (1s)
and sending connections and waiting for them to expire with the 408
status. Then in parallel, inject at about 1kh/s. The bug causes the
connections to sometimes wait longer than 1s before timing out.
The cause was the use of eb_insert_dup() on wrong nodes, as this
function is designed to work only on the top of the dup tree. The
solution consists in updating last_timer only when its bit is -1,
and using it only if its bit is still -1 (top of a dup tree).
The fix has not reduced performance because it only fixes the case
where this bug could fire, which is extremely rare.
Willy Tarreau [Fri, 6 Mar 2009 13:29:25 +0000 (14:29 +0100)]
[OPTIM] freq_ctr: do not rotate the counters when reading
It's easier to take the counter's age into account when consulting it
than to rotate it first. It also saves some CPU cycles and avoids the
multiply for outdated counters, finally saving CPU cycles here too
when multiple operations need to read the same counter.
The freq_ctr code has also shrinked by one third consecutively to these
optimizations.
Willy Tarreau [Fri, 6 Mar 2009 12:07:40 +0000 (13:07 +0100)]
[CLEANUP] remove last references to term_trace
term_trace was very useful while reworking the lower layers but has almost
completely been removed from every place it was referenced. Even the few
remaining ones were not accurate, so it's better to completely remove those
references and re-add them from scratch later if needed.
Willy Tarreau [Fri, 6 Mar 2009 11:51:23 +0000 (12:51 +0100)]
[BUG] switch server-side stream interface to close in case of abort
In pure TCP mode, there is no response analyser to switch the server-side
stream interface from INI to CLO when the output has been closed after an
abort. This caused sessions to remain indefinitely active when they were
aborted by the client during a TCP content analysis.
The proper action is to switch the stream interface to the CLO state from
INI when we have write enable and shutdown write.
Willy Tarreau [Fri, 6 Mar 2009 08:18:27 +0000 (09:18 +0100)]
[OPTIM] rate-limit: cleaner behaviour on low rates and reduce consumption
The rate-limit was applied to the smoothed value which does a special
case for frequencies below 2 events per period. This caused irregular
limitations when set to 1 session per second.
The proper way to handle this is to compute the number of remaining
events that can occur without reaching the limit. This is what has
been added. It also has the benefit that the frequency calculation
is now done once when entering event_accept(), before the accept()
loop, and not once per accept() loop anymore, thus saving a few CPU
cycles during very high loads.
With this fix, rate limits of 1/s are perfectly respected.
Willy Tarreau [Thu, 5 Mar 2009 22:48:25 +0000 (23:48 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] implement "rate-limit sessions" for the frontend
The new "rate-limit sessions" statement sets a limit on the number of
new connections per second on the frontend. As it is extremely accurate
(about 0.1%), it is efficient at limiting resource abuse or DoS.
Willy Tarreau [Thu, 5 Mar 2009 20:34:28 +0000 (21:34 +0100)]
[MINOR] acl: add 2 new verbs: fe_sess_rate and be_sess_rate
These new ACLs match frontend session rate and backend session rate.
Examples are provided in the doc to explain how to use that in order
to limit abuse of service.
Willy Tarreau [Thu, 5 Mar 2009 17:43:00 +0000 (18:43 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] measure and report session rate on frontend, backends and servers
With this change, all frontends, backends, and servers maintain a session
counter and a timer to compute a session rate over the last second. This
value will be very useful because it varies instantly and can be used to
check thresholds. This value is also reported in the stats in a new "rate"
column.
Willy Tarreau [Thu, 5 Mar 2009 13:54:50 +0000 (14:54 +0100)]
[MINOR] add curr_sec_ms and curr_sec_ms_scaled for current second.
Several algorithms will need to know the millisecond value within
the current second. Instead of doing a divide every time it is needed,
it's better to compute it when it changes, which is when now and now_ms
are recomputed.
curr_sec_ms_scaled is the same multiplied by 2^32/1000, which will be
useful to compute some ratios based on the position within last second.
Willy Tarreau [Wed, 4 Mar 2009 14:53:18 +0000 (15:53 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] implement error dump on unix socket with "show errors"
The new "show errors" command sent on a unix socket will dump
all captured request and response errors for all proxies. It is
also possible to bound the log to frontends and backends whose
ID is passed as an optional parameter.
The output provides information about frontend, backend, server,
session ID, source address, error type, and error position along
with a complete dump of the request or response which has caused
the error.
If a new error scratches the one currently being reported, then
the dump is aborted with a warning message, and processing goes
on to next error.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 1 Mar 2009 22:21:47 +0000 (23:21 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] store a complete dump of request and response errors in proxies
Each proxy instance, either frontend or backend, now has some room
dedicated to storing a complete dated request or response in case
of parsing error. This will make it possible to consult errors in
order to find the exact cause, which is particularly important for
troubleshooting faulty applications.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 1 Mar 2009 10:10:40 +0000 (11:10 +0100)]
[MINOR] ensure that http_msg_analyzer updates pointer to invalid char
If an invalid character is encountered while parsing an HTTP message, we
want to get buf->lr updated to reflect it.
Along this change, a few useless __label__ declarations have been removed
because they caused gcc to consume stack space without putting anything
there.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 1 Mar 2009 07:35:41 +0000 (08:35 +0100)]
[BUG] global.tune.maxaccept must be limited even in mono-process mode
On overloaded systems, it sometimes happens that hundreds or thousands
of incoming connections are queued in the system's backlog, and all get
dequeued at once. The problem is that when haproxy processes them and
does not apply any limit, this can take some time and the internal date
does not progress, resulting in wrong timer measures for all sessions.
The most common effect of this is that all of these sessions report a
large request time (around several hundreds of ms) which is in fact
caused by the time spent accepting other connections. This might happen
on shared systems when the machine swaps.
For this reason, we finally apply a reasonable limit even in mono-process
mode. Accepting 100 connections at once is fast enough for extreme cases
and will not cause that much of a trouble when the system is saturated.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 1 Mar 2009 07:27:21 +0000 (08:27 +0100)]
[BUG] the "source" keyword must first clear optional settings
Problem reported by John Lauro. When "source ... usesrc ..." is
set in the defaults section, it is not possible anymore to remove
the "usesrc" part when declaring a more precise "source" in a
backend. The only workaround was to declare it by server.
We need to clear optional settings when declaring a new "source".
The problem was the same with the "interface" declaration.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:58:45 +0000 (15:58 +0100)]
[BUG] fix unix socket processing of interrupted output
Unix socket processing was still quite buggy. It did not properly
handle interrupted output due to a full response buffer. The fix
mainly consists in not trying to prematurely enable write on the
response buffer, just like the standard session works. This also
gets the unix socket code closer to the standard session code
handling.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:17:24 +0000 (15:17 +0100)]
[BUG] fix random memory corruption using "show sess"
Commit 8a5c626e73bac905d150185e45110525588d7b4c introduced the sessions
dump on the unix socket. This implementation is buggy because it may try
to link to the sessions list's head after the last session is removed
with a backref. Also, for the LIST_ISEMPTY test to succeed, we have to
proceed with LIST_INIT after LIST_DEL.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 22 Feb 2009 09:53:55 +0000 (10:53 +0100)]
[DOC] filled the logging section of the configuration manual
Some parts from the previous doc about logging have been merged and
updated. Most of those parts have been reworked and completed. The
examples are now accurate and reflect recent versions.
[BUILD] Haproxy won't compile if DEBUG_FULL is defined
As subject when i try to compile haproxy with -DDEBUG_FULL it stop at
stream_sock.c file with:
gcc -Iinclude -Wall -O2 -g -DDEBUG_FULL -DTPROXY -DENABLE_POLL
-DENABLE_EPOLL -DENABLE_SEPOLL -DNETFILTER -DUSE_GETSOCKNAME
-DCONFIG_HAPROXY_VERSION=\"1.3.15\"
-DCONFIG_HAPROXY_DATE=\"2008/04/19\" -c -o src/stream_sock.o
src/stream_sock.c
src/stream_sock.c: In function 'stream_sock_chk_rcv':
src/stream_sock.c:905: error: 'fd' undeclared (first use in this function)
src/stream_sock.c:905: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
src/stream_sock.c:905: error: for each function it appears in.)
src/stream_sock.c:905: error: 'ob' undeclared (first use in this function)
src/stream_sock.c: In function 'stream_sock_chk_snd':
src/stream_sock.c:940: error: 'fd' undeclared (first use in this function)
src/stream_sock.c:940: error: 'ib' undeclared (first use in this function)
make: *** [src/stream_sock.o] Error 1
[CRITICAL] fix server state tracking: it was O(n!) instead of O(n)
Using the wrong operator (&& instead of &) causes DOWN->UP
transition to take longer than it should and to produce a lot of
redundant logs. With typical "track" usage (1-6 tracking servers) it
shouldn't make a big difference but for heavily tracked servers
this bug leads to hang with 100% CPU usage and extremely big
log spam.
Willy Tarreau [Wed, 4 Feb 2009 21:05:05 +0000 (22:05 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] implement bind-process to limit service presence by process
The "bind-process" keyword lets the admin select which instances may
run on which process (in multi-process mode). It makes it easier to
more evenly distribute the load across multiple processes by avoiding
having too many listen to the same IP:ports.
Willy Tarreau [Wed, 4 Feb 2009 17:46:54 +0000 (18:46 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] add support for source interface binding
Specifying "interface <name>" after the "source" statement allows
one to bind to a specific interface for proxy<->server traffic.
This makes it possible to use multiple links to reach multiple
servers, and to force traffic to pass via an interface different
from the one the system would have chosen based on the routing
table.
Willy Tarreau [Wed, 4 Feb 2009 16:19:29 +0000 (17:19 +0100)]
[MINOR] add support for bind interface name
By appending "interface <name>" to a "bind" line, it is now possible
to specifically bind to a physical interface name. Note that this
currently only works on Linux and requires root privileges.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:13:42 +0000 (16:13 +0100)]
[BUILD] add USE_LINUX_SPLICE to enable LINUX_SPLICE on linux 2.6
This will provide high performance data forwarding between sockets,
but it is broken on many kernels and will sometimes forward corrupted
data without some kernel patches. Consider this experimental for now.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:03:28 +0000 (16:03 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] splice: add the global "nosplice" option
Setting "nosplice" in the global section will disable the use of TCP
splicing (both tcpsplice and linux 2.6 splice). The same will be
achieved using the "-dS" parameter on the command line.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:42:27 +0000 (15:42 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] move global tuning options to the global structure
The global tuning options right now only concern the polling mechanisms,
and they are not in the global struct itself. It's not very practical to
add other options so let's move them to the global struct and remove
types/polling.h which was not used for anything else.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:06:58 +0000 (14:06 +0100)]
[OPTIM] make global.maxpipes default to global.maxconn/4 when not specified
global.maxconn/4 seems to be a good hint for global.maxpipes when that
one must be guessed. If the limit is reached, it's still possible to
set it manually in the configuration.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 25 Jan 2009 12:56:13 +0000 (13:56 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] splice: make use of pipe pools
Using pipe pools makes pipe management a lot easier. It also allows to
remove quite a bunch of #ifdefs in areas which depended on the presence
or not of support for kernel splicing.
The buffer now holds a pointer to a pipe structure which is always NULL
except if there are still data in the pipe. When it needs to use that
pipe, it dynamically allocates it from the pipe pool. When the data is
consumed, the pipe is immediately released.
That way, there is no need anymore to care about pipe closure upon
session termination, nor about pipe creation when trying to use
splice().
Another immediate advantage of this method is that it considerably
reduces the number of pipes needed to use splice(). Tests have shown
that even with 0.2 pipe per connection, almost all sessions can use
splice(), because the same pipe may be used by several consecutive
calls to splice().
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 25 Jan 2009 12:49:53 +0000 (13:49 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] introduce pipe pools
A new data type has been added : pipes. Some pre-allocated empty pipes
are maintained in a pool for users such as splice which use them a lot
for very short times.
Pipes are allocated using get_pipe() and released using put_pipe().
Pipes which are released with pending data are immediately killed.
The struct pipe is small (16 to 20 bytes) and may even be further
reduced by unifying ->data and ->next.
It would be nice to have a dedicated cleanup task which would watch
for the pipes usage and destroy a few of them from time to time.
Ross West [Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:32:41 +0000 (18:32 -0500)]
[BUILD] fix Makefile.bsd and Makefile.osx for stream_interface
Did a full compile of the 1.3.15.7 - 20081208 snapshot on Freebsd-7.x
recently, and noted that there needs to be a quick patch done on the
Makefile for bsd machines.
This was due to the stream_interface replacing the send data commands
in the rewrite Willy did a while ago.
Simple fix, and it compiled cleanly otherwise. Thanks for the work
Willy!
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:11:32 +0000 (11:11 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] splice: add hints to support older buggy kernels
Kernels before 2.6.27.13 would have splice() return EAGAIN on shutdown.
By adding a few tricks, we can deal with the situation. If splice()
returns EAGAIN and the pipe is empty, then fallback to recv() which
will be able to check if it's an end of connection or not.
The advantage of this method is that it remains transparent for good
kernels since there is no reason that epoll() will return EPOLLIN
without anything to read, and even if it would happen, the recv()
overhead on this check is minimal.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 25 Jan 2009 09:42:05 +0000 (10:42 +0100)]
[BUG] reserve some pipes for backends with splice enabled
If splicing is enabled in a backend, we need to guess how many
pipes will be needed. We used to rely on fullconn, but this leads
to non-working splicing when fullconn is not specified. So we now
fallback to global.maxconn.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:32:22 +0000 (00:32 +0100)]
[MAJOR] complete support for linux 2.6 kernel splicing
This code provides support for linux 2.6 kernel splicing. This feature
appeared in kernel 2.6.25, but initial implementations were awkward and
buggy. A kernel >= 2.6.29-rc1 is recommended, as well as some optimization
patches.
Using pipes, this code is able to pass network data directly between
sockets. The pipes are a bit annoying to manage (fd creation, release,
...) but finally work quite well.
Preliminary tests show that on high bandwidths, there's a substantial
gain (approx +50%, only +20% with kernel workarounds for corruption
bugs). With 2000 concurrent connections, with Myricom NICs, haproxy
now more easily achieves 4.5 Gbps for 1 process and 6 Gbps for two
processes buffers. 8-9 Gbps are easily reached with smaller numbers
of connections.
We also try to splice out immediately after a splice in by making
profit from the new ability for a data producer to notify the
consumer that data are available. Doing this ensures that the
data are immediately transferred between sockets without latency,
and without having to re-poll. Performance on small packets has
considerably increased due to this method.
Earlier kernels return only one TCP segment at a time in non-blocking
splice-in mode, while newer return as many segments as may fit in the
pipe. To work around this limitation without hurting more recent kernels,
we try to collect as much data as possible, but we stop when we believe
we have read 16 segments, then we forward everything at once. It also
ensures that even upon shutdown or EAGAIN the data will be forwarded.
Some tricks were necessary because the splice() syscall does not make
a difference between missing data and a pipe full, it always returns
EAGAIN. The trick consists in stop polling in case of EAGAIN and a non
empty pipe.
The receiver waits for the buffer to be empty before using the pipe.
This is in order to avoid confusion between buffer data and pipe data.
The BF_EMPTY flag now covers the pipe too.
Right now the code is disabled by default. It needs to be built with
CONFIG_HAP_LINUX_SPLICE, and the instances intented to use splice()
must have "option splice-response" (or option splice-request) enabled.
It is probably desirable to keep a pool of pre-allocated pipes to
avoid having to create them for every session. This will be worked
on later.
Preliminary tests show very good results, even with the kernel
workaround causing one memcpy(). At 3000 connections, performance
has moved from 3.2 Gbps to 4.7 Gbps.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:59:13 +0000 (21:59 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] add definitions for Linux kernel splicing
Some older libc don't define the splice() syscall, and some even
define a wrong one. For this reason, we try our best to declare
it correctly. These definitions still work with recent glibc.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:56:21 +0000 (21:56 +0100)]
[MINOR] introduce structures required to support Linux kernel splicing
When CONFIG_HAP_LINUX_SPLICE is defined, the buffer structure will be
slightly enlarged to support information needed for kernel splicing
on Linux.
A first attempt consisted in putting this information into the stream
interface, but in the long term, it appeared really awkward. This
version puts the information into the buffer. The platform-dependant
part is conditionally added and will only enlarge the buffers when
compiled in.
One new flag has also been added to the buffers: BF_KERN_SPLICING.
It indicates that the application considers it is appropriate to
use splicing to forward remaining data.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:44:07 +0000 (21:44 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] splice: add configuration options and set global.maxpipes
Three new options have been added when CONFIG_HAP_LINUX_SPLICE is
set :
- splice-request
- splice-response
- splice-auto
They are used to enable splicing per frontend/backend. They are also
supported in defaults sections. The "splice-auto" option is meant to
automatically turn splice on for buffers marked as fast streamers.
This should save quite a bunch of file descriptors.
It was required to add a new "options2" field to the proxy structure
because the original "options" is full.
When global.maxpipes is not set, it is automatically adjusted to
the max of the sums of all frontend's and backend's maxconns for
those which have at least one splice option enabled.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:38:44 +0000 (17:38 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] stream_sock: try to send pending data on chk_snd()
When the producer calls stream_sock_chk_snd(), we now try to send
all pending data asynchronously. If it succeeds, we don't have to
enable polling on the FD which saves about half of the calls to
epoll_wait().
In stream_sock_read(), we finally set the WAIT_ROOM flag as soon as
possible, in preparation of the splice code. We reset it when we
detect that some room has been released either in the buffer or in
the splice.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:25:31 +0000 (16:25 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] stream_sock_read: call ->chk_snd whenever there are data pending
The condition to cakk ->chk_snd() in stream_sock_read() was suboptimal
because we did not call it when the socket was shut down nor when there
was an error after data were added.
Now we ensure to call is whenever there are data pending.
Also, the "full" condition was handled before calling chk_snd(), which
could cause deadlock issues if chk_snd() did consume some data.
Willy Tarreau [Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:30:37 +0000 (15:30 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] split stream_sock_write() into callback and core functions
stream_sock_write() has been split in two parts :
- the poll callback, intented to be called when an I/O event has
been detected
- the write() core function, which ought to be usable from various
other places, possibly not meant to wake the task up.
The code has also been slightly cleaned up in the process. It's more
readable now.
Willy Tarreau [Fri, 9 Jan 2009 12:05:19 +0000 (13:05 +0100)]
[CLEANUP] stream_sock: move the write-nothing condition out of the loop
Some tricks to handle situations where we write nothing were in the
middle of the main loop in stream_sock_write(). This cleanup provides
better source and object code, and slightly shrinks the output code.
Willy Tarreau [Fri, 9 Jan 2009 11:18:24 +0000 (12:18 +0100)]
[CLEANUP] replace a few occurrences of (flags & X) && !(flags & Y)
This construct collapses into ((flags & (X|Y)) == X) when X is a
single-bit flag. This provides a noticeable code shrink and the
output code results in less conditional jumps.
Willy Tarreau [Fri, 9 Jan 2009 10:13:00 +0000 (11:13 +0100)]
[OPTIM] buffer: replace rlim by max_len
In the buffers, the read limit used to leave some place for header
rewriting was set by a pointer to the end of the buffer. Not only
this required subtracts at every place in the code, but this will
also soon not be usable anymore when we want to support keepalive.
Let's replace this with a length limit, comparable to the buffer's
length. This has also sightly reduced the code size.
Willy Tarreau [Thu, 8 Jan 2009 09:09:08 +0000 (10:09 +0100)]
[OPTIM] stream_sock: do not ask for polling on EAGAIN if we have read
It is not always wise to return 0 in stream_sock_read() upon EAGAIN,
because if we have read enough data, we should consider that enough
and try again later without polling in between.
We still make a difference between small reads and large reads though.
Small reads still lead to polling because we're sure that there's
nothing left in the system's buffers if we read less than one MSS.
Willy Tarreau [Wed, 7 Jan 2009 23:09:41 +0000 (00:09 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] i/o: rework ->to_forward and ->send_max
The way the buffers and stream interfaces handled ->to_forward was
really not handy for multiple reasons. Now we've moved its control
to the receive-side of the buffer, which is also responsible for
keeping send_max up to date. This makes more sense as it now becomes
possible to send some pre-formatted data followed by forwarded data.
The following explanation has also been added to buffer.h to clarify
the situation. Right now, tests show that the I/O is behaving extremely
well. Some work will have to be done to adapt existing splice code
though.
/* Note about the buffer structure
The buffer contains two length indicators, one to_forward counter and one
send_max limit. First, it must be understood that the buffer is in fact
split in two parts :
- the visible data (->data, for ->l bytes)
- the invisible data, typically in kernel buffers forwarded directly from
the source stream sock to the destination stream sock (->splice_len
bytes). Those are used only during forward.
In order not to mix data streams, the producer may only feed the invisible
data with data to forward, and only when the visible buffer is empty. The
consumer may not always be able to feed the invisible buffer due to platform
limitations (lack of kernel support).
Conversely, the consumer must always take data from the invisible data first
before ever considering visible data. There is no limit to the size of data
to consume from the invisible buffer, as platform-specific implementations
will rarely leave enough control on this. So any byte fed into the invisible
buffer is expected to reach the destination file descriptor, by any means.
However, it's the consumer's responsibility to ensure that the invisible
data has been entirely consumed before consuming visible data. This must be
reflected by ->splice_len. This is very important as this and only this can
ensure strict ordering of data between buffers.
The producer is responsible for decreasing ->to_forward and increasing
->send_max. The ->to_forward parameter indicates how many bytes may be fed
into either data buffer without waking the parent up. The ->send_max
parameter says how many bytes may be read from the visible buffer. Thus it
may never exceed ->l. This parameter is updated by any buffer_write() as
well as any data forwarded through the visible buffer.
The consumer is responsible for decreasing ->send_max when it sends data
from the visible buffer, and ->splice_len when it sends data from the
invisible buffer.
A real-world example consists in part in an HTTP response waiting in a
buffer to be forwarded. We know the header length (300) and the amount of
data to forward (content-length=9000). The buffer already contains 1000
bytes of data after the 300 bytes of headers. Thus the caller will set
->send_max to 300 indicating that it explicitly wants to send those data,
and set ->to_forward to 9000 (content-length). This value must be normalised
immediately after updating ->to_forward : since there are already 1300 bytes
in the buffer, 300 of which are already counted in ->send_max, and that size
is smaller than ->to_forward, we must update ->send_max to 1300 to flush the
whole buffer, and reduce ->to_forward to 8000. After that, the producer may
try to feed the additional data through the invisible buffer using a
platform-specific method such as splice().
*/
Willy Tarreau [Wed, 7 Jan 2009 19:10:39 +0000 (20:10 +0100)]
[MEDIUM] stream_sock: factor out the return path in case of no-writes
Previously, we wrote nothing only if the buffer was empty. Now with
send_max, we can also write nothing because we are not allowed to send
anything due to send_max.
The code starts to look like spaghetti. It needs to be rearranged a
lot before merging the splice patches.
Willy Tarreau [Wed, 7 Jan 2009 18:33:39 +0000 (19:33 +0100)]
[MINOR] add the splice_len member to the buffer struct in preparation of splice support
In preparation of splice support, let's add the splice_len member
to the buffer struct. An earlier implementation made it conditional,
which made the whole logics very complex due to a large number of
ifdefs.
Now BF_EMPTY is only set once both buf->l and buf->splice_len are
null. Splice_len is initialized to zero during buffer creation and
is currently not changed, so the whole logics remains unaffected.
When splice gets merged, splice_len will reflect the number of bytes
in flight out of the buffer but not yet sent, typically in a pipe for
the Linux case.
If an analyser sets buf->to_forward to a given value, that many
data will be forwarded between the two stream interfaces attached
to a buffer without waking the task up. The same applies once all
analysers have been released. This saves a large amount of calls
to process_session() and a number of task_dequeue/queue.