Bug #1457: conf: non-standard units used for file size indication - Suricata - Open Information Security Foundation

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Bug #1457

closed

conf: non-standard units used for file size indication

Added by James Moe over 9 years ago. Updated 4 months ago.

Status:

Closed

Priority:

Normal

Assignee:

Victor Julien

Target version:

8.0.0-beta1

Affected Versions:

Effort:

low

Difficulty:

low

Label:

Description

Here is a typical conversation regarding sizes in bytes:

i increased the stream memcap from default 32mb to 128mb;

I think you can try setting this to 512mb

i decreased the reassembly memcap from default 128mb to 64mb.

and this to 1024mb

mb = milli-bit
Mb = mega-bit
MB = mega-byte The metric and binary prefixes are case-sensitive. They are international standards. Usually the context is sufficient to sort what it really meant. But not always; and I find it bothersome to see such misuse.
I feel it professionally imperative to use the correct language, especially in the context of networking where traffic may be discussed in both bytes and bits per second. The same applies for most of the other letters, k (kilo) being an exception.
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix> and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix>.

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Updated by Andreas Moe over 9 years ago

Firstly standards are not laws, so no need for a system to follow it. But it might lower potential missunderstandings for newcommers to suri. Personally i (and a quick survey of a handfull coworkers) do not relly on the case of a unit suffix in our work to identify the unit of measure.

If this is a change we should do i am for it though, seems simple to implement, changing old configs should not be difficult eithet, and it would as mentioned lower the potential misunderstandigns for new users.

Also, not sure if this should be a bug or a feature request for suri to follow a given standard?

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Updated by James Moe over 9 years ago

Andreas Moe wrote:

Firstly standards are not laws, so no need for a system to follow it.

W3C's standards, for instance HTML, are not law either. Life is much easier, though, when we conform to them.

Also, not sure if this should be a bug or a feature request for suri to follow a given standard?

It is bit of both.
bug: Correct the misuse of standard prefixes
feature: Conform to international standards regarding numeric prefixes

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Updated by Andreas Moe over 9 years ago

Well, after thinking about this for a while, the correct suffixes would probably be ex MebiByte (MiB) and so on. This would be following the IEEE 1541-2002 standard. So i think using kilo and mega are wrong (since they are 10^n, and since this is "computer science" it should base itself on 2^n).

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Updated by Andreas Herz about 8 years ago

Assignee set to OISF Dev
Target version set to TBD

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Updated by Victor Julien over 6 years ago

Assignee changed from OISF Dev to Anonymous
Effort set to low
Difficulty set to low

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Updated by Andreas Herz over 5 years ago

Assignee set to Community Ticket

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Updated by Andreas Herz over 5 years ago

Status changed from New to Feedback
Assignee changed from Community Ticket to OISF Dev

Do we have any thoughts/decision about that?

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Updated by Victor Julien 5 months ago

Subject changed from Non-standard prefixes used for file size indication to conf: non-standard units used for file size indication
Status changed from Feedback to In Progress
Assignee changed from OISF Dev to Victor Julien
Priority changed from Low to Normal
Target version changed from TBD to 8.0.0-beta1