Symptoms

Under certain circumstances, the Traffic Management Shell (tmsh) can consume more system memory than expected.

Impact

Increased control plane pressure. Various delays may occur in both command-line and GUI response. Extreme instances may cause one or more processes to terminate, with potential disruptive effect. Risk of impact from this issue is increased when a large number of automated tmsh sessions are created.

Conditions

-- Multiple users or remote processes connecting to the BIG-IP administrative command-line interface. -- You are running certain versions of BIG-IP software, specifically: - 12.1.x versions earlier than 12.1.5.3. - 13.1.x versions earlier than 13.1.3.4. - Any 14.x version earlier than 14.1.4, except 14.1.2.6. - 15.0.x versions earlier than 15.0.1.2. - 15.1.x versions earlier than 15.1.0.4.

Workaround

For users with administrative privilege (who are permitted to use the 'bash' shell), the login shell can be changed to avoid invoking tmsh when it may not be needed: tmsh modify /auth user ADMINUSERNAME shell bash

Fix Information

This issue is fixed in the following releases: -- 12.1.5.3 and later -- 13.1.3.4 and later -- 14.1.2.6 -- 14.1.4 and later -- 15.0.1.2 and later -- 15.1.0.4 and later -- 16.0.0 and later

Behavior Change