Strange scan behaviour -- wait for free process warning

Hello and happy new year,

We are facing a problem where scans are getting stuck while printing out warnings in the openvas logs.

This is from the openvas.log:

sd main:WARNING:2022-01-02 23h13.25 utc:1620: pluginlaunch_wait_for_free_process: Invalid argument
sd main:WARNING:2022-01-02 23h13.25 utc:1621: pluginlaunch_wait_for_free_process: Invalid argument
sd main:WARNING:2022-01-02 23h13.25 utc:1620: pluginlaunch_wait_for_free_process: Invalid argument
sd main:WARNING:2022-01-02 23h13.25 utc:1621: pluginlaunch_wait_for_free_process: Invalid argument

The log above keeps growing rapidly with these warnings and eventually server runs out of disk space.

I haven’t found any solution yet, i hope you can help me :slight_smile:

Thanks!

GVM versions

gsad: 21.4.3
gvmd: 21.4.3
openvas-scanner: 21.4.3
gvm-libs: 21.4.3

Environment

Operating system:
Kernel: Linux 20.04.1-Ubuntu
Installation method / source:

Hi @momferatus and happy new year to you too :slight_smile:

I couldn’t find anything on that error, but gvmd is currently at 21.4.4
so you’ll want to check that the components are up to date here: New releases for GVM 20.08 and GVM 21.04

Hi @DeeAnn ,

Thank you for the reply! will try to upgrade it and test it.

It seems to get stuck when running nmap.nasl, and particularly in here. It complains that there are no available running processes. Could you explain please what these running processes are and how many?

Is there any dependency on nmap version for the openvas 21.04? We are currently using nmap v7.80.

Hi @momferatus,

You’re welcome and for the first question, I don’t know what the running processes are or how many, but if one of the developers sees this perhaps they can explain it.

For the second question- yep the versions make a difference so you can try updating nmap to current (v7.90 as of this post) to see if that helps.

A little update on my side:

I have upgraded all openvas components based on the suggested releases, but the problem still remains.

I have also upgraded nmap to v7.90, no luck there too.

It seems that openvas, when running nmap.nasl (plugin), it is caught in a loop in which loads of warning messages are emitted in the openvas.log and the server runs out of disk space after a while.

a) Has anyone noticed any strange behavior recently when running nmap?
b) Is it possible to somehow throttle these warning messages?