Create Layer 4-7 HTTP Upload Traffic

Architecture of Uploads

By default, web servers (like Apache or Nginx) are designed to respond by giving content. Receiving content requires some add-on to accept incoming uploads. The notable methods are CGI and WebDAV. WebDAV configurations are specific to either Apache or Nginx, so we will focus this cookbook on the CGI method, with PHP as the CGI engine. PHP is installed by default with LANforge systems.

Deciding on the Upload Destination

Continual traffic generation is a scenario that would fill the space of any web server. This cookbook describes a technique that will not save uploaded data, and thus should allow an indefinite duration of upload traffic. Specifically, processes that accept uploaded data do not need to save it. The technique used by up.php relies on the files being uploaded to /tmp which on most recent LANforge systems is a tmpfs RAM-based filesystem.

Upload Considerations

1. There is no good way to ignore the uploaded output. It goes immediately to the filesystem.

2. The default fedora upload location is /tmp. This is a RAM-based filesystem. You will crash your LANforge nginx server, and possibly the machine itself if your uploads take up more than half your ram.

3. If you want to upload a lot of data per upload, it is going to have to live on the LANforge’s SSD.

   1. In /etc/php.ini, set upload_tmp_dir = “/home/lanforge/tmp”

   2. Consider that SSDs have a writes-per-lifetime limit. Continual writing adds wear to the drive.

   3. SSDs can only write between 30-500MB/s (4000 Mbps). This depends on the model of SSD, the speed of the SATA bus, and the write-caching and wear leveling techniques the SSD uses.

   4. If doing HTTP uploads is a performance test, we suggest building a system with hundreds of gigabytes of RAM for tmpfs space.

4. To handle large numbers of stations doing uploads, set the upload size limit small to avoid filling up RAM.

   1. Monitor free RAM with htop. On a ct521a, there is 4GB of RAM, total. Thus you have up to 2GB of free space in /tmp:

   2. Remeber that as while the LANforge GUI runs, it consumes RAM itself. Depending on the duration of the report, it can consume most of the remaining ram. Consider running the LANforge GUI on a separate machine.

   3. In /etc/php.ini, set your post_max_size and upload_max_filesize parameters to (2GB / number of Layer 4 connections):

      1. For 16 stations with one Layer 4 connection each:
         2 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 / 16 = 134,217,728 ~= 134MB

      2. For 32 stations with two Layer 2 connections each:
         2 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 / 64 = 33,554,432 ~= 33MB

      3. The php.ini default max upload size is set at 2MB:

         post_max_size = 8M
         upload_max_filesize = 2M

      4. These system defaults permit 1024 simultaneous uploads.

Configure nginx to use up.php

1. Copy up.php to /usr/local/lanforge/nginx/html

2. In the Port Mgr tab, modify your port and select the ☑HTTP checkbox and click Apply. In this example, the port is eth1 (192.168.48.92). Keep the window open.

3. In a terminal, edit /home/lanforge/vr_conf/nginx_eth1.conf

   1. Remove the first line
   2. At the bottom of the server {} stanza, add this configuration:

      location /up.php {
           include /usr/local/lanforge/nginx/conf/fastcgi_params;
           fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
           fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock;
           fastcgi_index index.php;
      }

   Example of file:

     1 # Remove the first line '# Autogenerated by ...' and edit the file as
     2 # desired for a custom config file.
     3 
     4 worker_processes        1;
     5 error_log logs/eth1_error.log;
     6 pid             /home/lanforge/vr_conf/nginx_eth1.pid;
     7 events {
     8     worker_connections  1024;
     9 }
    10 
    11 http {
    12     include       /usr/local/lanforge/nginx/conf/mime.types;
    13     default_type  application/octet-stream;
    14     access_log  logs/eth1_access.log;
    15     sendfile            on;
    16     keepalive_timeout  65;
    17 
    18     server {
    19         listen       192.168.48.92:80 bind_dev=eth1;
    20         server_name  localhost;
    21         access_log  logs/eth1_host.access.log;
    22 
    23         location / {
    24             root   html;
    25             index  index.html index.htm;
    26         }
    27         error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    28         location = /50x.html {
    29             root   html;
    30         }
    31         location /up.php {
    32              include /usr/local/lanforge/nginx/conf/fastcgi_params;
    33              fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    34              fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock;
    35              fastcgi_index index.php;
    36         }
    37    }
    38 }  

   1. Save the file.
   1. Edit the /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf file
      1. Look for the listen.acl_users parameter, and add the user nobody
      2. listen.acl_users = apache,nginx,nobody
      3. save
   2. Restart the php-fpm service:
      systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Monitor nginx errors

1. To monitor the nginx log file:

   1. Open a terminal
   2. Become root using sudo -s
   3. cd /usr/local/lanforge/nginx/logs
   4. tail -F *.log

2. Permission Denied errors:

   1. For this error: [crit] connect() to unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock failed (13: Permission denied) while connecting to upstream, client: 192.168.48.18, server: localhost, request: "GET /up.php HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock:"
   2. Edit the /etc/php-fpm/www.conf file mentioned above and restart the php-fpm service.

Apply changed nginx settings

1. In the eth1 Configure Settings window, you will toggle the HTTP setting to re-apply the changed configuration:
   1. Unselect ☐HTTP
   2. Click Apply
   3. Select ☑HTTP
   4. Click Apply

Checking for the up.php page with Curl

1. Open a terminal and become root:
   1. sudo -s
   2. cd /home/lanforge
   3. ./vrf_exec.bash wlan0 curl -sqv http‍://192.168.48.92/up.php
   4. Look for errors, like Sorry, the page you are looking for is currently unavailable.

Browsing the up.php page with Firefox

1. To see this page from the LANforge desktop, you will use the vrf_exec.bash script.
2. Open a terminal and issue these commands:
   1. xhost +
   2. su -
   3. cd /home/lanforge
   4. export DISPLAY=:1
   5. ./vrf_exec.bash eth1 firefox http‍://192.168.48.92/up.php

Creating a Generic Endpoint to upload with Curl

1. There a token files to upload, located in /var/www/html named dataslug{size}.bin.

2. The curl -F command will issue a POST in the multipart-form manner.

3. The filename= parameter is the name of the form's [input] parameter that matches the [input type=file] element in the page.

4. The @/var/www/html/data_slug_256K.bin is curl syntax for opening the named file.

5. Start off by practicing the vrf_exec.bash command from a terminal:

   1. ./vrf_exec.bash wlan0 curl -F 'filename=@/var/www/html/data_slug_256K.bin' http://192.168.48.92/up.php

6. Once that works, go to the LANforge GUI Generic tab and create a new endpoint:

   1. Enter a name
   2. Select your resource and port (wlan0)
   3. Select Command Builder: Generic
   4. Enter the command:
      

      ./vrf_exec.bash wlan0 curl -F 'filename=@/var/www/html/data_slug_256K.bin' http://192.168.48.92/up.php

   5. Click OK

7. In the Generic tab, select your connection and click Start

   1. Double click the connection

   2. In the Create/Modify Generic Endpoint window, click the Sync button (at the bottom).

   3. You will see the HTML text of the result.

      Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
      0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
      100  256k    0   622  100  256k  24960  10.0M --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 10.4M
      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <html lang="en">
      <head>
       <title>Layer 4 Upload Test</title>
       <meta charset="utf-8">
       <style>
           body {
               font-family: "Century Gothic", "DejaVu Sans",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
               margin: 1em auto;
           }
           h1 {
               text-align: center;
           }
       </style>
      </head>
      <body>
       <h1>Layer 4 File Upload Test</h1>
           <h1>Result:</h1>
           <ul>
               <li>File name: <tt><data_slug_256K.bin></tt></li>
               <li>File size: <tt><262144></tt></li>
               <li>File tmp: <tt></tmp/phpRLHVa2></tt></li>
           </ul>
      </body></html>
      

   4. A command that might provide better output could look like:

      ./vrf_exec.bash wlan0 curl -s -o/tmp/$$.html -F 'filename=@/var/www/html/data_slug_256K.bin' http://192.168.48.92/up.php;
      grep File /tmp/$$.html

   5. It provides terse output like:

      <h1>Layer 4 File Upload Test</h1>
           <li>File name: <tt>[data_slug_256K.bin]</tt></li>
           <li>File size: <tt>[262144]</tt></li>
           <li>File tmp: <tt>[/tmp/phpfhDFMf]</tt></li>
      

The up.php Page

You can copy the up.php page as text from here: