Burp Suite · Job board · Newbie question: how should a burpsuite-jobs config file be organised?

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BSr/burpsuite-jobs·posted by rase·just nowInternals

Newbie question: how should a burpsuite-jobs config file be organised?

Short version: burpsuite-jobs needs almost no tuning at small and medium scale — the point where it starts to hurt is much further out than most people assume. Full measurements below.

One last trap: in container environments remember to adjust the memory-related parameters in step. Otherwise the host limit and the process expectation disagree, and the symptom is intermittent, unreproducible failure.

# Load test: do not jump straight to the max concurrency.
# Ramp it up, otherwise you miss the knee.
for c in 50 100 200 400 800; do
  wrk -t8 -c$c -d60s --latency http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/feed
  sleep 20
done

What genuinely surprised me was the tail. The average looked great while P99 jumped by an order of magnitude past some threshold. The cause was not burpsuite-jobs itself but our upstream connection reuse — the load test traffic was too clean and hid the long-tail requests.

On trade-offs, my view is this: if nobody on the team owns this area long-term, do not introduce a second mechanism. With two coexistence you first have to work out which one is even in play when things break, and that costs far more than the performance you saved.

1250 comments

1250 comments

· first 120 loaded
M
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

486
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

477
Ddev_zhou·12 minutes agoedited

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

443
Sslow_query·just now

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

426
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

98
Hhuang_ke·2 days agoedited

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

452
Kkite·1 hour ago

This is not a burpsuite-jobs problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

199
Sslow_query·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

296
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

2
Lli_ming·2 days agoLevel 6

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

15
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

178
Oops_wang·2 days ago

This is not a burpsuite-jobs problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

30
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

88
Lli_ming·2 days agoedited

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

227
Zzhou_yi·2 days agoLevel 6

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

176
Kkernel_panic·5 hours agoedited

One counter-example: below burpsuite-jobs 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

66
Oops_wangOP·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

40
Kkernel_panicMod·2 days agoedited

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

389
Llinlin·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

379
Rrase·2 hours ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

341
Llinlin·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

180
NnikicOP·1 hour ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

267
Llinlin·2 days agoedited

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

355
Nnikic·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

334
WwinterMod·1 hour ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

302
Ttang_hao·1 hour ago

This is not a burpsuite-jobs problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

485
Kkite·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

433
Sslow_query·2 days ago

One counter-example: below burpsuite-jobs 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

253
Hhuang_ke·12 minutes ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

75
Llinlin·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

505
Kkite·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

24
Rran_boOP·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

231
Zzhu_zong·yesterday

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

306
Zzhu_zongMod·yesterday

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

28
Lli_ming·3 minutes agoedited

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

12
Ttang_hao·1 hour ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

132
Kkite·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

265
Sswoole_lee·just nowedited

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

224
Mmike_xu·2 days agoLevel 6

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

10
Ddev_zhou·3 minutes ago

This is not a burpsuite-jobs problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

1
Sslow_query·3 minutes ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

12
Wwinter·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

52
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

441
Rrase·yesterday

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

36
NnikicOP·2 days agoLevel 6

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

12
Lli_ming·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

17
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

One counter-example: below burpsuite-jobs 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

302
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

299
Sswoole_lee·2 days agoedited

I just read the burpsuite-jobs source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

291
Zzhou_yi·just now

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

34
Rrase·28 minutes ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

288
Sslow_query·2 days ago

This is not a burpsuite-jobs problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

265
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

261
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

1
Rran_boOP·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

188
Wwinter·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

393
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

35
Llinlin·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

6
Sslow_query·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

211
Rran_bo·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

239
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

233
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

412
Lli_ming·2 days ago

I just read the burpsuite-jobs source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

223
Rran_bo·yesterday

One counter-example: below burpsuite-jobs 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

499
Ttang_hao·28 minutes ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

196
Mmike_xu·3 minutes ago

I just read the burpsuite-jobs source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

193
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

183
Lli_mingOP·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

121
KkiteMod·2 days ago

I just read the burpsuite-jobs source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

177
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

41
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

3
Lli_ming·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

25
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

155
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

101
Lli_ming·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

148
Kkite·2 hours ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

144
Mmike_xuMod·1 hour ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

137
Sswoole_leeOP·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

243
Mmike_xu·1 hour ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

3
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

140
Wwinter·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

207
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

137
Oops_wang·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

134
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

121
Wwinter·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

96
Bbob_chenOP·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

34
Rran_bo·2 days ago

One counter-example: below burpsuite-jobs 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

12
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

1
Zzhu_zongOP·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

18
Kkite·5 hours agoedited

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

72
Lli_ming·2 days agoedited

This is not a burpsuite-jobs problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

68
Rrase·28 minutes agoedited

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

27
Cchen_dev·2 days agoedited

One counter-example: below burpsuite-jobs 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

26
Aalice_dev·yesterdayedited

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

12
Oops_wang·1 hour ago

This is not a burpsuite-jobs problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

6
Lli_ming·3 minutes ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

11
Nnikic·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

10
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

8
Rran_bo·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

8
Nnikic·just now

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

6
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

289
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

317
Rran_bo·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

1
Mmike_xuMod·yesterdayedited

I just read the burpsuite-jobs source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

206
Llinlin·2 days ago

One counter-example: below burpsuite-jobs 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

38
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

449
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

61
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

6
Oops_wang·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

6
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

One counter-example: below burpsuite-jobs 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

4
Ttang_haoOP·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

6
Ttang_hao·2 days agoedited

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

55
Llinlin·2 days ago

This is not a burpsuite-jobs problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

61
Hhuang_ke·just now

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

4
Kkite·yesterday

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

1
Zzhu_zong·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

1
Zzhou_yi·5 hours ago

One counter-example: below burpsuite-jobs 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

12
Sslow_query·2 days ago

I just read the burpsuite-jobs source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

1
Oops_wang·3 minutes agoedited

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

122
Lli_ming·2 days ago

I just read the burpsuite-jobs source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

73

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