Last Modified: Oct 16, 2023
Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP LTM
Known Affected Versions:
11.6.0, 11.6.1, 11.6.2, 11.6.3, 11.6.3.1, 11.6.3.2, 11.6.3.3, 11.6.3.4, 11.6.4, 11.6.5, 11.6.5.1, 12.0.0, 12.0.0 HF1, 12.1.0 HF1, 12.0.0 HF2, 12.1.0 HF2, 12.0.0 HF3, 12.0.0 HF4, 12.1.1 HF1, 12.1.1 HF2, 12.1.2 HF1, 12.1.2 HF2, 12.1.0, 12.1.1, 12.1.2, 13.0.0
Fixed In:
13.0.0 HF1, 12.1.3, 11.6.5.2
Opened: Jan 19, 2017 Severity: 3-Major Related Article:
K46452834
STPD process on any 2000/4000/i2000/i4000 series platform that sends BPDUs will grow in physical memory usage indefinitely so long as its role in the tree results in sending BPDU packets. The memory usage will be faster for each interface that is sending BPDUs.
Memory leak resulting in indefinite consumption of available physical memory over time.
Spanning tree is enabled on any 2000/4000/i2000/i4000 series platform and the device has a role in the tree that results in sending BPDUs on one or more interfaces. Memory can be seen to increase when tracking with Linux top commands. ex. top -b -n 1 | grep stpd The 5th and 6th columns 'VIRT' and 'RES' slowly increase over time, indicating the memory leak.
While the memory leak itself cannot be mitigated without a hotfix, the problem can be avoided if the tree can be configured in such a way that the defect affected platforms don't generate BPDUs. This can be done by choosing a root such that the defect affected platforms will have its interfaces to be in blocking mode, or if possible, to be in passthrough mode.
BPDU process source code fixed to release memory allocated for each BPDU packet created and sent.