Bug 1546194

Summary: RHEL7 curl performs poorly versus upstream
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Reporter: Matt Mezynski <mmezynsk>
Component: nss-softoknAssignee: nss-nspr-maint <nss-nspr-maint>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: BaseOS QE Security Team <qe-baseos-security>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.4CC: cww, hkario, kdudka, kengert, kwalker, mmezynsk, nmavrogi, szidek
Target Milestone: rc   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2018-03-07 10:46:15 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 1477664    
Attachments:
Description Flags
server sosreport
none
curl output showing nss involvement none

Description Matt Mezynski 2018-02-16 14:51:10 UTC 
Created attachment 1397055 [details]
server sosreport

Description of problem:
RHEL 7 curl packages perform more slowly due to differing calls made than an upstream package version compiled against openssl libraries.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Any time the RHEL curl package is used.

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Install RHEL curl
2.  Install upstream curl
3.  Compare the calls made, and the time differences between the two packages returning.

Actual results:
RHEL curl not as highly performing as the custom compiled upstream version

Expected results:
RHEL curl to be as highly performing as the custom compiled upstream version

Additional info:
Business justification - Its is impacting our customers and the response times have increased. Ideally we want the libcurl shipped with RHEL to work optimally and i dont want to replace the system provided one with upstream one, as you know that poses lot of changes in managing servers that way in the long run. 

Back to the issue, i ran few traces to see why the open source upstream is performing better. I see that RHEL shipped one is compiled against the NSS ssl libraries vs the open source i compiled against openssl libs. The additional time taken seems to be taken during NSS initialization or establishing connection phase. I am posting the traces here, let me know if you can make anything out of this and help me understand if there is an option to fix this using RHEL shipped curl.


Customer believes they have discovered the bug noted here from RHEL 6 in the RHEL 7 version of curl:

 https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2968211

sosreport and strace to be attached
Comment 2 Matt Mezynski 2018-02-16 14:51:52 UTC 
Created attachment 1397056 [details]
curl output showing nss involvement
Comment 3 Kamil Dudka 2018-02-16 16:45:35 UTC 
Could you please try to export NSS_SDB_USE_CACHE=no and check whether it improves the performance in your testing scenario?
Comment 4 Matt Mezynski 2018-02-16 19:16:07 UTC 
Hello,

The customer has seen improvements in the following ways:

   I have seen setting it to yes or no and saw improvements in both cases.

They had been interested in NSS_SDB_USE_CACHE=yes in the case and I had them try it, but they did not report the change in performance until today.

Thanks,

Matt
Comment 5 Kamil Dudka 2018-02-16 19:45:07 UTC 
Thanks for confirmation!  Reassigning to nss-softokn then...
Comment 6 Kai Engert (:kaie) (inactive account) 2018-03-05 13:14:39 UTC 
Hello Kamil, what is your conclusion based on that experiment?
Comment 29 Red Hat Bugzilla 2023-09-15 00:06:33 UTC 
The needinfo request[s] on this closed bug have been removed as they have been unresolved for 500 days