Re: [squid-users] Squid ... delay in startup

Asim Ahmed @ Folio3 wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've squid-2.6.STABLE22-1.el5 installed on an Intel Pentium D box on
> RHEL5. There are two main problems with this setup:
>
> 1. When I restart squid, it takes an uncertain amount of time to come
> up! ranging from a minute to unlimited (till I restart again).
> 2. Even when startup successfully, on some clients it stops responding
> for a while and pressing F5 continously for some time opens the page and
> sometimes open the page without images & in distorted form.
>
> I have tried 3 different versions of squid to remove the doubt about a
> particular build's problem. I've tried squid-3.0.STABLE16-1.el5,
> squid-2.7.STABLE6-1.el5 and now squid-2.6.STABLE22-1.el5. But no luck! I
> am using squid in conjunction with Shorewall and shorewall has been
> working just fine since last 3 years on same system.
>
> Any idea what might be going wrong?

Squid startup takes however long it requires to:
  * allocate base memory
  * load the config
  * allocate any extra memory required by config
  * start all the helper processes,
  * load the cache index

> Further, can anybody suggest best
> suited distro to use for this purpose?

Not really. It comes down to resources and speed. Speed of hardware and
speed of Squid version startup code (the latter being sub-optimal in all
releases so far, 2.7 having the fastest to date).

> Someone here suggested SUSE
> Enterprise but I haven't given it a try though as yet. Squid.conf is below:
>
> acl all src 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
> acl manager proto cache_object
> acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255
> acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8
> acl SSL_ports port 443
> acl Safe_ports port 80 # http
> acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp
> acl Safe_ports port 443 # https
> acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher
> acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais
> acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports
> acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt
> acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http
> acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker
> acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http
> acl CONNECT method CONNECT
> http_access allow CONNECT SSL_ports
> acl Super_Users src "/etc/squid/custom_acls/super_users.acl"
> acl Local_Network src "/etc/squid/custom_acls/local_network.acl"
> acl Servers_Range src "/etc/squid/custom_acls/servers_range.acl"
> acl Non_Restricted_Group src
> "/etc/squid/custom_acls/non_restricted_group.acl"
> acl ISP_Users src "/etc/squid/custom_acls/gerrys_103_users.acl"
> acl Temporary_Users src "/etc/squid/custom_acls/temporary_users.acl"
> acl Blocked_Sites dstdomain "/etc/squid/custom_acls/blocked_sites.acl"
> acl Blocked_Extensions urlpath_regex -i
> "/etc/squid/custom_acls/blocked_extensions.acl"
> acl Working_Hours time MTWHF 9:00-19:00
> acl Download method GET
> acl Multimedia_Request req_mime_type -i ^application/x-msmetafile$
> acl Multimedia_Request req_mime_type -i application/x-msmetafile
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i -i ^application/x-msmetafile$
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i -i application/x-msmetafile
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i video/x-ms-asf
> acl Media_Reply_UrlPath_Regex urlpath_regex \.(afx|asf|asr|asx)(\?.*)?$
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i video/flv video/x-flv
> acl Media_Reply_UrlPath_Regex urlpath_regex \.flv(\?.*)?$
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i video/mp4
> acl Media_Reply_UrlPath_Regex urlpath_regex \.mp4(\?.*)?$
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i video/x-msvideo
> acl Media_Reply_UrlPath_Regex urlpath_regex \.avi(\?.*)?$
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i video/x-la-asf
> acl Media_Reply_UrlPath_Regex urlpath_regex \.(lsf|lsx)(\?.*)?$
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i video/quicktime
> acl Media_Reply_UrlPath_Regex urlpath_regex \.(qt|mov)(\?.*)?$
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i video/mpeg
> acl Media_Reply_UrlPath_Regex urlpath_regex
> \.(mp2|mpa|mpe|mpeg|mpg|mpv2)(\?.*)?$
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i ms-hdr
> acl Multimedia_Reply rep_mime_type -i x-fcs
> http_access allow manager localhost
> http_access deny manager
> http_access deny !Safe_ports
> http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports
> http_access allow Super_Users
> http_access deny Blocked_Extensions Working_Hours Download
> http_access deny Blocked_Sites Working_Hours
> http_access deny Multimedia_Request Working_Hours
> http_access deny Media_Reply_UrlPath_Regex Working_Hours
> http_access allow Servers_Range
> http_access allow Temporary_Users
> http_access allow ISP_Users
> http_access allow localhost
> http_access deny all
> http_reply_access allow Multimedia_Reply Super_Users
> http_reply_access deny Multimedia_Reply Working_Hours
> icp_access allow all
> http_port 46095 transparent
> hierarchy_stoplist cgi-bin ?
> cache_mem 999 MB
> cache_dir aufs /var/spool/squid 30720 16 256
> cache_swap_low 90
> cache_swap_high 92
> access_log /var/log/squid/access.log squid
> acl QUERY urlpath_regex cgi-bin \?
> cache deny QUERY
> refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080
> refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440
> refresh_pattern . 0 20% 4320
> acl apache rep_header Server ^Apache
> broken_vary_encoding allow apache
> shutdown_lifetime 5 seconds

5 seconds may be too short to dump the entire cache index to disk
swap.state journal on shutdown. One thing to check for is when Squid
starts up how often does it complain that the cache is "DIRTY"?

That complaint indicates that the index journal is not available (or not
complete) and Squid is falling back to a very, very slow startup
process. It then reads every single cached file in your 30GB cache for
meta data to rebuild the swap.state journal from scratch.

> visible_hostname 103_gateway
> coredump_dir /var/spool/squid
>

Amos

-- 
Please be using
   Current Stable Squid 2.7.STABLE7 or 3.0.STABLE19
   Current Beta Squid 3.1.0.14