NAME¶

sfcapd — sflow collector for sflow version v2/v4 and v5

SYNOPSIS¶

DESCRIPTION¶

sfcapd reads sflow data from the network and stores the records into binary formatted files. The sflow implementation is based of sflowtool. The packet samples are converted into netflow compatible records.

If you want to collect netflow data, please have a look at nfcapd which is also part of the nfdump tools.

Sflow is an industry standard developed by InMon Corporation. For more information see http://sflow.org.

sfcapd is the twin of nfcapd and supports the same feature set. See also nfcapd(1) for more details.

The options are as follows:

-w flowdir

Set the flow directory to store the output files. If a sub hierarchy is specified with -S the final directory is concatenated to flowdir/subdir.

-C config

Reads additional configuration parameters from config file. sfcapd tries to read the config file from the install default path $prefix/etc/ which may be overwritten by the environment variable NFCONF , which again is overwritten by this option -C. If -C none is specified, then no config file is read, even if found in the search path.

-p portnum

Set the port number to listen. Default port is 9995

-d interface

Reads sflow data from an erspan encoded datalink. All traffic sent to this interface is interpreted as sflow data stream.

-b bindhost

Specifies the hostname/IPv4/IPv6 address to bind for listening. This can be an IP address or a hostname, resolving to a local IP address.

-4

Forces sfcapd to listen on IPv4 addresses only. Can be used together with -b if a hostname has IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

-6

Forces sfcapd to listen on IPv6 addresses only. Can be used together with -b if a hostname has IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

-J mcastgroup

Join the specified IPv4 or IPv6 multicast group for listening.

-R host[/port]

Enables the packet repeater. All incoming packets are sent additionally to another host and port. host is either a valid IPv4/IPv6 address, or a symbolic hostname, which resolves to a valid IP address. port may be omitted and defaults to 9995. Note: As IPv4/IPv6 are accepted the host/port separator is '/'. Up to 8 additional repeaters my be defined. Use this method to daisy chain collectors.

-A

Sets source address spoofing mode for the repeater. The source address of the repeated packages is set to the original IP address. This needs sfcapd to be started with root privileges. Please note, that source spoofing may be blocked by firewalls or routers in your network.

-I ident

Sets ident as identification string for the current source. This string is written into the output file to identify the source. Default is 'none'. If you have multiple sources, see option

-n 'ident,IPList,flowdir'

Configures a NetFlow/IPFIX source identified by the string ident,IPList,flowdir. The IPList is a semicolon-separated list of one or more IP addresses or CIDR blocks, and may include both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. For example:

-n 'router1,192.0.2.1;2001:db8::1/64,in'

Note that the entire argument must be enclosed in single quotes to prevent the shell from interpreting the semicolon as a command separator.

This option also acts as a filter: only packets originating from IP addresses listed in IPList will be accepted. Packets from sources not matching any entry in the list are silently discarded.

If you have multiple sources per collector, specify multiple -n options. All exporters send their flows to the same port specified with -p. Do not mix single-source configuration using -I with multiple -n options.

-M flowdir

Set the flow directory for dynamic allocated exporters. New exporters are dynamically added when sending data. All exporters send netflow data to the same port and IP. For each dynamically added source, a new sub directory is created under flowdir with the name of the IP address of the exporter. All '.' and ':" in IP addresses are replaced be '-'.

-D

Set daemon mode: fork to background and detach from terminal. sfcapd terminates on signal TERM, INT or HUP.

-P pidfile

Writes the running process ID into pidfilw. Use this option to integrate sfcapd in start/stop files.

-u userid

Drop privileges of running process to user userid. sfcapd needs to be started as user root.

-g groupid

Drop privileges of running process to group groupid. sfcapd needs to be started as user root.

-B bufflen

Sets the network socket input buffer to bufflen bytes. For high volume traffic it is recommended to raise this value to typically > 100k, otherwise you risk to lose packets. The default is OS (and kernel) dependent.

-S num

Adds an additional directory sub hierarchy to store the data files. The default is 0, no sub hierarchy, which means all files go directly into flowdir. The flowdir is concatenated with the specified sub hierarchy format to create the final data directory. The following hierarchies are defined:

• 0 default no hierarchy levels
• 1 %Y/%m/%d year/month/day
• 2 %Y/%m/%d/%H year/month/day/hour
• 3 %Y/%W/%u year/week_of_year/day_of_week
• 4 %Y/%W/%u/%H year/week_of_year/day_of_week/hour
• 5 %Y/%j year/day-of-year
• 6 %Y/%j/%H year/day-of-year/hour
• 7 %Y-%m-%d year-month-day
• 8 %Y-%m-%d/%H year-month-day/hour

-t interval

Sets the time interval in seconds to rotate files. The default value is 300s ( 5min ). The smallest available interval is 2s.

-z=lzo

Compress flow files with LZO1X-1 compression. Fastest compression.

-z=bz2

Compress flow files with bz2 compression. Slow but most efficient. It is not recommended to use bz2 in a real time capturing.

-z=lz4[:level]

Compress flow files with LZ4 compression. Fast and efficient. Optional level should be between 1..10 Changing the level results in smaller files but uses up more time to compress. Levels > 5 may need more workers. See -W.

-z=zstd[:level]

Compress flow files with ZSTD compression. Fast and efficient. Optional level should be between 1..10 Changing the level results in smaller files but uses up more time to compress. Levels > 5 may need more workers. See -W.

-W num

Set the number of worker threads. The default depends on the number of cores online. The value must not exceed the number of online CPU cores.

Worker threads are used to compress data blocks when writing flow files to disc. Using multiple workers can significantly improve throughput, especially when using higher compression levels for lz4 or zstd.

-e

Sets auto-expire mode. At the end of every rotate interval -t sfcapd runs an expire cycle to delete files according to max lifetime and max filesize as defined by nfexpire(1)

-x command

At the end of every -t interval and after the file rotate has completed, sfcapd runs the command command. The string for command may contain the following place holders, which are expanded before running:

• %f File name of new data file including any sub hierarchy.
• %d Top flowdir. The full path of the new file is: %d/%f
• %t Time slot string in ISO format e.g. 201107110845.
• %u Time slot string in UNIX time format.
• %i Identification string ident string supplied by -I

-X extensionList

extensionList is a ',' separated list of extensions to be stored by sfcapd. The numbers correspond to the extension list in nfxV3.h. By default extensions are added dynamically to store all data sent by the exporter. If extensionList is given, only those elements matching the extension are processed and stored. Usually this option is not needed, unless for specific requirements.

-o options

Set sfcapd options. This is a ',' separated list of options. Available options:

gre Add GRE tunnel decoding.

These options may also be defined in the nfdump.conf config file. Options specified on the command line overwrite the value in the config file.

-m metricpath

Enables the flow metric exporter. Flow metric information is sent to the UNIX socket metricpath at the rate specified by -i This option may by used to export flow metric information to other systems such as InfluxDB or Prometheus. Please note: The flow metric does not include the full record. Only the flow statistics is sent.

-i metricrate

Sets the interval for the flow metric exporter. This interval may be different from the file rotation interval t and is therefore independent from file rotation.

-v

Set verbose level. Accepted 0 to 4. The default level is 1 with moderate information. Use -v 3 to printf netflow records in raw format while collecting. Please note, that not all elements are printed. This option is for debugging purpose only, to verify if incoming netflow data is processed correctly.

-V

Print sfcapd version and exit.

-h

Print help text on stdout with all options and exit.

RETURN VALUES¶

sfcapd returns 0 on success and 255 if initialization failed.

SEE ALSO¶

http://sflow.org

https://sflow.org/developers/licensing.php

https://github.com/sflow/sflowtool

nfdump(1) nfcapd(1) nfpcapd(1)

BUGS¶

No software without bugs! Please report any bugs back to me.