Bug #977: WARNING on empty rules file is fatal (should not be) - Suricata - Open Information Security Foundation

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Bug #977

closed

WARNING on empty rules file is fatal (should not be)

Added by Duane Howard about 11 years ago. Updated about 10 years ago.

Status:

Closed

Priority:

Normal

Assignee:

Victor Julien

Target version:

2.1beta3

Affected Versions:

Effort:

Difficulty:

Label:

Description

Output from the two scenarios (empty rules file enabled/disabled):

---DISABLED EMPTY RULES FILE---
me@mybox:~$ suricata -T -l /tmp -c /etc/suricata/suricata.yaml
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - Running suricata under test mode
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - This is Suricata version 1.4.2 RELEASE
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - CPUs/cores online: 1
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - allocated 229376 bytes of memory for the defrag hash... 4096 buckets of size 56
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - preallocated 1000 defrag trackers of size 144
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - defrag memory usage: 373376 bytes, maximum: 16777216
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - AutoFP mode using default "Active Packets" flow load balancer
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - preallocated 10000 packets. Total memory 42580000
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - allocated 229376 bytes of memory for the host hash... 4096 buckets of size 56
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - preallocated 1000 hosts of size 120
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - host memory usage: 349376 bytes, maximum: 16777216
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - allocated 14680064 bytes of memory for the flow hash... 262144 buckets of size 56
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - preallocated 40000 flows of size 272
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - flow memory usage: 25560064 bytes, maximum: 2147483648
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - IP reputation disabled
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - using magic-file /usr/share/file/magic
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:33 - <Info> - Delayed detect disabled
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:41 - <Info> - 11 rule files processed. 7446 rules successfully loaded, 0 rules failed
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:46 - <Info> - 7476 signatures processed. 39 are IP-only rules, 2445 are inspecting packet payload, 5906 inspect application layer, 0 are decoder event only
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:46 - <Info> - building signature grouping structure, stage 1: adding signatures to signature source addresses... complete
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:47 - <Info> - building signature grouping structure, stage 2: building source address list... complete
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:50 - <Info> - building signature grouping structure, stage 3: building destination address lists... complete
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:52 - <Info> - Threshold config parsed: 141 rule(s) found
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:52 - <Info> - Core dump size set to unlimited.
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:52 - <Info> - fast output device (regular) initialized: fast.log
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:52 - <Info> - Unified2-alert initialized: filename unified2.alert, limit 50 MB
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:52 - <Info> - http-log output device (regular) initialized: http.log
19/9/2013 -- 22:16:52 - <Info> - Configuration provided was successfully loaded. Exiting.
me@mybox:~$

---ENABLED EMPTY RULES FILE---
me@mybox:~$ suricata -T -l /tmp -c /etc/suricata/suricata.yaml
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - Running suricata under test mode
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - This is Suricata version 1.4.2 RELEASE
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - CPUs/cores online: 1
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - allocated 229376 bytes of memory for the defrag hash... 4096 buckets of size 56
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - preallocated 1000 defrag trackers of size 144
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - defrag memory usage: 373376 bytes, maximum: 16777216
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - AutoFP mode using default "Active Packets" flow load balancer
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - preallocated 10000 packets. Total memory 42580000
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - allocated 229376 bytes of memory for the host hash... 4096 buckets of size 56
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - preallocated 1000 hosts of size 120
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - host memory usage: 349376 bytes, maximum: 16777216
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - allocated 14680064 bytes of memory for the flow hash... 262144 buckets of size 56
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - preallocated 40000 flows of size 272
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - flow memory usage: 25560064 bytes, maximum: 2147483648
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - IP reputation disabled
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - using magic-file /usr/share/file/magic
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:18 - <Info> - Delayed detect disabled
19/9/2013 -- 22:17:24 - <Warning> - [ERRCODE: SC_ERR_NO_RULES(42)] - No rules loaded from /etc/suricata/rules/temporary-stuff.rules
me@mybox:~$

Note that everything stops processing here, no rules loaded (from my other files, the same number of rules should have been loaded.

Shouldn't the Warning be non-fatal?

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Updated by Duane Howard about 11 years ago

After some more testing it seems like this only occurs when running with -T actually reloading Suricata seems to succeed with an empty file.

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Updated by Anoop Saldanha about 11 years ago

Well, maybe it makes sense to just warn(without being fatal) on empty files, yeah.

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Updated by Victor Julien about 11 years ago

Description updated (diff)

Looks like the commandline option --init-errors-fatal is implied with -T. Not sure that is a bad thing.

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Updated by Duane Howard about 11 years ago

Is there a way to disable --init-errors-fatal with -T? I'd like a mechanism to ensure suricata will not fail to start without actually starting the service...

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Updated by Victor Julien about 11 years ago

Target version set to TBD

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Updated by Victor Julien about 10 years ago

Status changed from New to Assigned
Assignee set to Victor Julien
Target version changed from TBD to 3.0RC2

Duane, could you try https://github.com/inliniac/suricata/pull/1224 ?

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Updated by Duane Howard about 10 years ago

Looks like it works for empty file:

[17308] 21/11/2014 -- 18:21:44 - (detect.c:410) (SigLoadSignatures) -- [ERRCODE: SC_ERR_NO_RULES(42)] - No rules loaded from /etc/suricata/rules/empty.rules
[17308] 21/11/2014 -- 18:21:44 - (detect.c:439) (SigLoadSignatures) -- 12 rule files processed. 9994 rules successfully loaded, 0 rules failed

[17308] 21/11/2014 -- 18:21:52 - (suricata.c:2293) (main) -- Configuration provided was successfully loaded. Exiting.

Also appears to work for multiple broken rules:
[22071] 21/11/2014 -- 18:26:33 - (util-rule-vars.c:89) (SCRuleVarsGetConfVar) -- [ERRCODE: SC_ERR_UNDEFINED_VAR(101)] - Variable "HME_NET" is not defined in configuration file
[22071] 21/11/2014 -- 18:26:33 - (detect.c:354) (DetectLoadSigFile) -- [ERRCODE: SC_ERR_INVALID_SIGNATURE(39)] - error parsing signature "alert tcp $HME_NET any > $EXTERNAL_NET any (msg:"BROKEN RULE 1"; flow:established; content:"|52 61 72 21 1A 07 00|"; tag:session,300,seconds; classtype:misc-activity; sid:6999998; rev:1;)" from file /etc/suricata/rules/empty.rules at line 1
[22071] 21/11/2014 - 18:26:33 - (detect-content.c:204) (DetectContentDataParse) -- [ERRCODE: SC_ERR_INVALID_SIGNATURE(39)] - Invalid hex code assembly in content - "|52 61 72 21 1A 07 00". Invalidating signature
[22071] 21/11/2014 -- 18:26:33 - (detect.c:354) (DetectLoadSigFile) -- [ERRCODE: SC_ERR_INVALID_SIGNATURE(39)] - error parsing signature "alert tcp $HOME_NET any > $EXTERNAL_NET any (msg:"BROKEN RULE 2"; flow:established; content:"|52 61 72 21 1A 07 00"; tag:session,300,seconds; classtype:misc-activity; sid:6999999; rev:6;)" from file /etc/suricata/rules/empty.rules at line 2
[22071] 21/11/2014 - 18:26:33 - (detect.c:439) (SigLoadSignatures) -- 12 rule files processed. 9994 rules successfully loaded, 2 rules failed

My only concern is that the final exit code is still 0, indicating success, where previously it would exit with a failure. Using -T to test loads before a Suricata restart would currently only require checking the final exit code of suricata -T, this change seems like it will break that though.

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