external command with large result very slow

[oskar]

I have check_nrpe on the server with multiline patch (​https://dev.icinga.org/attachments/113/nrpe_multiline.patch), and NSClient++ 0.3.9. In the client's nsc.ini:

[modules]
..
NRPEListener.dll
CheckExternalScripts.dll

[Settings]
..
string_length=65536

[NRPE]
..
packet_count=64

[External Script]
list_services=sc query state= all

If I run 'sc query state= all' in a terminal it completes in a fraction of a second. (sc is a standard command in Windows XP and later. The particular command will show detailed information on all services in the system.) But if I run 'check_nrpe .. -c list_services' on the server it takes 9-15 seconds to complete. In other words it's maybe 100 times slower through NRPE and NSClient++. The server and client are connected over a gigabit network so the issue isn't there. I get similar delays when using any command that outputs ~50K of data in NSClient++ (e.g. "cmd /c type 50k_file.txt" or something).

Maybe NSClient++ isn't designed to return that much data but it seems there is some communication/locking issue inside NSClient++ 0.3.9 that causes this. During the 10 second delay there isn't significant CPU use of the client though. Also the log says:

2011-10-23 01:21:39: debug:NSClient++.cpp:1144: Injecting: list_services:
2011-10-23 01:21:42: debug:NSClient++.cpp:1180: Injected Result: OK '
[all output]
2011-10-23 01:21:42: debug:NSClient++.cpp:1181: Injected Performance Result:

It is almost always 3 seconds between the two first lines.

Let me know if there is more I can test.

Regards,

Oskar Liljeblad (oskar@…)

[mickem]

Improved the speed of this a lot.
This will be in RC3 (or next nightly build)