Skip to main content

Faster tests of logstash configuration

If you're using logstash in all but the simplest setups, you have probably started testing your logstash config along the way. This means writing ruby rspec tests like the following:

we used to do the same, but over time we noticed that the test suite would take more and more time to to run. A quick investigation revealed that a lot of time was spent in the startup and shutdown of logstash itself, since Logstash would be started and stopped for each sample block.

But what caused logstash to take such a long time to start and stop?

Running rspec with the TEST_DEBUG=1 environment variable set revealed substantial logging related to starting the inputs and output plugins. The elasticsearch output in particular would complain a lot about not being able to connect to ES, with retries at regular intervals.

I realized then that since we don't actually need the output and input plugins perhaps we can skip starting them. With a quick change to the configuration loading block:


run times for the test suite were cut to 25% of their original time.

To make sure we don't accidentally introduce errors in the input and output configs we still run one simple suite with input and output both enabled by calling the function with the all argument set to true (default is false).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mirth: recover space when mirthdb grows out of control

I was recently asked to recover a mirth instance whose embedded database had grown to fill all available space so this is just a note-to-self kind of post. Btw: the recovery, depending on db size and disk speed, is going to take long. The problem A 1.8 Mirth Connect instance was started, then forgotten (well neglected, actually). The user also forgot to setup pruning so the messages filled the embedded Derby database until it grew to fill all the available space on the disk. The SO is linux. The solution First of all: free some disk space so that the database can be started in embedded mode from the cli. You can also copy the whole mirth install to another server if you cannot free space. Depending on db size you will need a corresponding amount of space: in my case a 5GB db required around 2GB to start, process logs and then store the temp files during shrinking. Then open a shell as the user that mirth runs as (you're not running it as root, are you?) and cd in
Post a Comment
Read more

From 0 to ZFS replication in 5m with syncoid

The ZFS filesystem has many features that once you try them you can never go back. One of the lesser known is probably the support for replicating a zfs filesystem by sending the changes over the network with zfs send/receive. Technically the filesystem changes don't even need to be sent over a network: you could as well dump them on a removable disk, then receive  from the same removable disk.
1 comment
Read more

How to automatically import a ZFS pool built on top of iSCSI devices with systemd

When using ZFS on top of iSCSI devices one needs to deal with the fact that iSCSI devices usually appear late in the boot process. ZFS on the other hand is loaded early and the iSCSI devices are not present at the time ZFS scans available devices for pools to import. This means that not all ZFS pools might be imported after the system has completed boot, even if the underlying devices are present and functional. A quick and dirty solution would be to run  zpool import <poolname> after boot, either manually or from cron. A better, more elegant solution is instead to hook into systemd events and trigger zpool import as soon as the devices are created.
Post a Comment
Read more