
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Application: jdresolve 0.6.1
   Author: [1]John D. Rowell
   Homepage: [2]http://www.jdrowell.com/Linux/Projects/jdresolve
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   FOR THE IMPATIENT
   
   ./configure
   make install
   
   Try: jdresolve <log file> > <resolved file>
   i.e. jdresolve access_log > resolved.log
   
   To use recursion, just use the "-r" command line option.
   
   DESCRIPTION
   
   jdresolve resolves IP addresses to hostnames. Any file format is
   supported, including those where the line does not begin with the IP
   address. One of the strongest features of the program is the support
   for recursion, which can drastically reduce the number of unresolved
   hosts by faking a hostname based on the network that the IP belongs
   to. DNS queries are sent in parallel, which means that you can
   decrease run time by increasing the number of simultaneous sockets
   used (given a fast enough machine and available bandwidth). By using
   the database support, performance can be increased even further, by
   using cached data from previous runs.
   
   HOW IT USED TO WORK
   
   jdresolve used the algorithms describe below up to version 0.2.
   
   The initial version of jdresolve tried to only speed up the name
   resolution by implementing numerous concurrent requests. I The first
   problem was: how to resolve the maximum possible number of IPs
   concurrently without reading the whole log file into memory (they can
   get quite _huge_)? I figured I'd need a 2 pass approach, collecting
   all distinct host IPs that needing resolving in the first step, then
   resolving them efficiently inside a loop, and finally just replacing
   the resolved IPs on the second pass through the log file.
   
   This way we can garantee that the resolve queue will always be full
   with no need to weight that against how many lines of buffered log
   entries we would need to cache. The number of distinct IP addresses
   tend to be quite lower than the number of lines in the log file, and
   the IP part takes about only 1/20th of the log line, so we can't be
   using too much memory just by putting a few hundred or thousand small
   strings into a hash.
   
   After looking thru [3]CPAN, I came across the excellent Net::DNS
   module and was more than happy to note that it already provide a
   subroutine and examples for background queries. Just add IO::Select to
   that and you have a full non-blocking aproach to multiple concurrent
   queries. You can even specify the timeouts to make the name resolving
   even more efficient.
   
   Having this much done, I was quite happy to have the fastest log
   resolving routine I have come accross. By setting the numbers of
   concurrent sockets and timeouts you could fine tune the beast to
   resolve names _very_ rapidly. But still there where about 25% of the
   IPs left unresolved...
   
   "This is not much help", I thought. I need to know _at least_ from
   what country these people are accessing from. After a few not very
   scientifical aproaches, I realized that by recurring thru the DNS
   classes (C, B and finally A) and checking for the host listed in the
   SOA record I could be pretty sure this was a father domain to the IP.
   The implementation goes like this: find out all distinct IP addresses,
   then determine which C, B and A classes contain these addresses. Make
   up a list from these queries and send them thru a resolver in chuncks
   of 32 (configurable via the command line). If a socket times out,
   leave that request unresolved.
   
   After running a big log file against the recursive aproach, I
   determined it didn't take much longer to resolve it at all. Full class
   domains tend to have decently configured DNS servers, and you get a
   lot of repeated classes when resolving your logs. The best was still
   to come: 0 unresolved IPs :) And since that I haven't found an IP that
   can't be determined at least to it's A class.
   
   HOW IT WORKS NOW
   
   The above algorithm works extremely well except for the case of very
   large logs (>100Mb). The hashes containing IPs and their parent A/B/C
   classes gets pretty huge doesn't fit in memory any more.
   
   So as of v0.3, we have a new 1 pass approach. We have a line cache
   that holds 10000 lines (configurable with -l, don't set it much
   lower). Using my test base it looks like each 10000 lines take about
   4Mb of RAM during processing (that's the log lines themselves plus the
   hashes and arrays used for caching/processing). Each IP and class to
   be resolved has a count value, which is increased every time a line
   with that number is read, and decreased after we print out a resolved
   line with that reference value.
   
   Think of it as a "moving window" method, and that we do our own
   garbage collection. The process pauses if the first line in our line
   cache is still unresolved, we don't have any more sockets, or we're
   waiting for socket data. We can't control the last two items, but to
   minimize the pauses do to yet unresolved lines, increase the -l value
   if you notice pauses during resolving. There should be enough lines
   cached so that even if we have timeouts on sockets we are still
   waiting for other socket data to come in, not just for 1 single socket
   to time out.
   
   Using this method the memory usage during executing is almost
   constant. So you can determine how much RAM you wish to use for
   resolving names and set your -l value and forget about it. There's
   really no performance loss when compared to the <=v0.2 algorithm if
   you have a big enough line cache.
   
   HOW TO USE IT
   
   Example: jdresolve access_log > resolved.log
   
   If you simply run the script as you would with the Apache logresolve
   program, you get the same results, only much faster. But if you want
   really take advantage of jdresolve, you should at least turn on the -r
   option for recursive resolves. As of version 0.2, the -m option takes
   a mask as an argument. The valid substitutions are %i for the IP
   address and %c for the resolved class. So an IP like 1.2.3.4 with a
   mask of "%i.%c" (the default) would become something like
   "1.2.3.4.some.domain". A mask of "somewhere.in.%c" would turn it into
   "somewhere.in.some.domain".
   
   The -h switch shows you basic help information. The -v switch will
   display version information. Use -d 1 or -d 2 (more verbose) to debug
   the resolving process and get extra statistics. If you don't care for
   the default statistics, use -n to disable them.
   
   After some runs you may want to change your timeout value. The -t
   option accepts a new value in seconds. For even better performance,
   use the -s switch with a value greater then 32, but remember that many
   operating systems have a hard coded default for open files of 256 or
   1024. Check your system's limit with "ulimit -a".
   
   New in v0.3 is the -l switch, which specified how many lines we will
   cache for resolving. The default is 10000, but can be vastly
   incremented without using too much RAM, as explained in "HOW IT
   WORKS".
   
   After you used jdresolve on the log file, you can check which ips
   where left unresolved by using the --unresolved option on the file
   that was generated.
   
   WHAT DOES RHOST DO?
   
   'rhost' is a quick script to take advantage of the new STDIN
   functionality of jdresolve. Many times you use the 'host' command to
   resolve a single IP (like 'host 200.246.224.10'). As with standard log
   resolvers, 'host' doesn't do recursion. So 'rhost' just calls
   jdresolve with the apropriate parameters to resolve that single IP
   number. The syntax is 'rhost <ip>'.
   
   DATABASE SUPPORT
   
   As of version 0.5, jdresolve provides simple database support thru db
   (dbm, gdbm, sdbm, etc) files. You can use the --database switch to
   specify the db file and that will allow for fallback in case some DNS
   servers are down and also performance improvements since you can lower
   your timeout value without sacrificing resolved percentage.
   
   To use the database support, just supply a database name (i.e.
   'hosts.db') using the --database option. If it does not yet exist, a
   new database with that name will be created. All resolved hosts and
   classes during a jdresolve run will be cached to the database.
   
   After you have some data in a db, you can use --dumpdb to look at it.
   With --mergedb to add new information to it (the format of the input
   file is the same as the one from a dump using --dumpdb, e.g. an
   ip/class followed by the hostname/classname, separated by white space)
   
   Ex: echo "0.0.0.0 testip" | jdresolve --database hosts.db --mergedb -
   ...adds and IP entry to the db
   Ex: echo "0.0.0 classname" | jdresolve --database hosts.db --mergedb -
   ...adds a class entry to the db
   
   Note: Since when recursing the resolved hostnames are stored to the
   database (even when resolved by recursion), you _may_ not want to use
   the same database for normal and recursed runs. That is because a
   cached host from a resolved run will show up as a "real" IP if you
   don't recurse and use the --dbfirst or --dbonly options, or just use
   the database and the lookup times out. Nothing too serious, but this
   detail may be important to some people.
   
   SOME NOTES ON NET::DNS
   
   It seems that Net::DNS can perform suboptimally on non-Linux machines,
   even on *BSD (this is based on some bug reports I got from people
   using jdresolve in those environments). Also, on Windows NT (yes, some
   people still use that), you should make sure there is a 'resolv.conf'
   file somewhere (I'm no NT expert, read the docs). Since we use so
   little of the functionality of Net::DNS, I may replace it with
   standard sockets some time in the future. It is still a very very nice
   module though :)
   
   SUPPORT
   
   If you have dificulties using this program or would like to request a
   new feature, feel free to reach me at me@jdrowell.com.
   
   LICENSING
   
   jdresolve is licensed under the GPL. See the COPYING file for details.

References

   1. mailto:me@jdrowell.com
   2. http://www.jdrowell.com/Linux/Projects/jdresolve
   3. http://www.cpan.org/
