nmsgpcnt

nmsgpcnt

This is nmsgpcnt. It contains code that counts NMSG protobuf payloads. It is intended as an example of how to write C code to manually deserialize an NMSG Google Protocol Buffer encoded container. It reads input from a binary NMSG file and counts the number of NMSG containers and payloads. Originally published in Google Protocol Buffer Deserialization The Hard Way.

In addition to the primary nmsgpcnt-fsi program, two other reference implementations of nmsgpcnt are included. One built using the protoc-c API, the other using the nanopb API. To compile these tools you'll need to install both packages.

File Manifest

nmsgpcnt comes with three top-level source files containing the program code to count NMSG containers payloads. While the FSI implementation is self-contained, the other two examples require respective API code. It can be confusing so here's a file manifest:

• Makefile: Simple non-autoconf'd Makefile
• README.md: This file
• nmsgpcnt-fsi.c Farsight Security Nmsg protobuf decoder
• nmsgpcnt-npb.c Nanopb Nmsg protobuf decoder
• nmsgpcnt-ptc.c Protoc-c Nmsg protobuf decoder
• src/nmsg.pb-c.{c,h} Protoc-c generated Nmsg interface
• src/nmsg.pb.{c,h} Nanopb Nmsg generated definitions and header
• src/nmsg.proto Nmsg protobuf definitions
• src/pb.h Nanopb low-level header
• src/pb_common.{c,h} Nanopb common support functions
• src/pb_decode.{c,h} Nanopb runtime library decoding routines
• test.sh Benchmarking test script

nmsgpcnt examples

All of the nmsgpcnt programs have the same calling convention:

$ nmsgpcnt-fsi
nmsgpcnt-npb parse an NMSG file and emit container/payload count
usage: ./nmsgpcnt-npb file.nmsg

For SIE / SRA customers you can easily generate a file to use via nmsgtool.

$ nmsgtool -C ch202 -c 2000000 -w 202-2000000.nmsg

The included test.sh script will invoke and time all three programs against the specified input file:

$ ./test.sh 202-2000000.nmsg
Running nmsgpcnt-npb (nanopb) against 202-2000000.nmsg
containers: 720
payloads:   2000481
real 2.31
user 1.84
sys 0.47
Running nmsgpcnt-ptc (protoc-c) against 202-2000000.nmsg
containers: 720
payloads:   2000481
real 1.47
user 0.97
sys 0.49
Running nmsgpcnt-fsi (Farsight Security) against 202-2000000.nmsg
containers: 720
payloads:   2000481
real 0.59
user 0.15
sys 0.44