This patch extends qc_stream_desc API to be able to allocate small
buffers. QUIC MUX API is similarly updated as ultimatly each application
protocol is responsible to choose between a default or a smaller buffer.
Internally, the type of allocated buffer is remembered via qc_stream_buf
instance. This is mandatory to ensure that the buffer is released in the
correct pool, in particular as small and standard buffers can be
configured with the same size.
This commit is purely an API change. For the moment, small buffers are
not used. This will changed in a dedicated patch.
Define a new buffer pool reserved to allocate smaller memory area. For
the moment, its usage will be restricted to QUIC, as such it is declared
in quic_stream module.
Add a new config option "tune.bufsize.small" to specify the size of the
allocated objects. A special check ensures that it is not greater than
the default bufsize to avoid unexpected effects.
QUIC MUX buffer allocation limit is now directly based on the underlying
congestion window size. previous static limit based on conn-tx-buffers
is now unused. As such, this commit adds a warning to users to prevent
that it is now obsolete.
Secondly, update max-window-size setting. It is now the main entrypoint
to limit both the maximum congestion window size and the number of QUIC
MUX allocated buffer on emission. Remove its special value '0' which was
used to automatically adjust it on now unused conn-tx-buffers.
Each QUIC MUX may allocate buffers for MUX stream emission. These
buffers are then shared with quic_conn to handle ACK reception and
retransmission. A limit on the number of concurrent buffers used per
connection has been defined statically and can be updated via a
configuration option. This commit replaces the limit to instead use the
current underlying congestion window size.
The purpose of this change is to remove the artificial static buffer
count limit, which may be difficult to choose. Indeed, if a connection
performs with minimal loss rate, the buffer count would limit severely
its throughput. It could be increase to fix this, but it also impacts
others connections, even with less optimal performance, causing too many
extra data buffering on the MUX layer. By using the dynamic congestion
window size, haproxy ensures that MUX buffering corresponds roughly to
the network conditions.
Using QCC <buf_in_flight>, a new buffer can be allocated if it is less
than the current window size. If not, QCS emission is interrupted and
haproxy stream layer will subscribe until a new buffer is ready.
One of the criticals parts is to ensure that MUX layer previously
blocked on buffer allocation is properly woken up when sending can be
retried. This occurs on two occasions :
* after an already used Tx buffer is cleared on ACK reception. This case
is already handled by qcc_notify_buf() via quic_stream layer.
* on congestion window increase. A new qcc_notify_buf() invokation is
added into qc_notify_send().
Finally, remove <avail_bufs> QCC field which is now unused.
This commit is labelled MAJOR as it may have unexpected effect and could
cause significant behavior change. For example, in previous
implementation QUIC MUX would be able to buffer more data even if the
congestion window is small. With this patch, data cannot be transferred
from the stream layer which may cause more streams to be shut down on
client timeout. Another effect may be more CPU consumption as the
connection limit would be hit more often, causing more streams to be
interrupted and woken up in cycle.
Define a new QCC counter named <buf_in_flight>. Its purpose is to
account the current sum of all allocated stream buffer size used on
emission.
For this moment, this counter is updated and buffer allocation and
deallocation. It will be used to replace <avail_bufs> once congestion
window is used as limit for buffer allocation in a future commit.
Define a new qc_stream_desc flag QC_SD_FL_OOB_BUF. This is to mark
streams which are not subject to the connection limit on allocated MUX
stream buffer.
The purpose is to simplify handling of QUIC MUX streams which do not
transfer data and as such are not driven by haproxy layer, for example
HTTP/3 control stream. These streams interacts synchronously with QUIC
MUX and cannot retry emission in case of temporary failure.
This commit will be useful once connection buffer allocation limit is
reimplemented to directly rely on the congestion window size. This will
probably cause the buffer limit to be reached more frequently, maybe
even on QUIC MUX initialization. As such, it will be possible to mark
control streams and prevent them to be subject to the buffer limit.
QUIC MUX expose a new function qcs_send_metadata(). It can be used by an
application protocol to specify which streams are used for control
exchanges. For the moment, no such stream use this mechanism.
A limit per connection is put on the number of buffers allocated by QUIC
MUX for emission accross all its streams. This ensures memory
consumption remains under control. This limit is simply explained as a
count of buffers which can be concurrently allocated for each
connection.
As such, quic_conn structure was used to account currently allocated
buffers. However, a quic_conn nevers allocates new stream buffers. This
is only done at QUIC MUX layer. As such, this commit moves buffer
accounting inside QCC structure. This simplifies the API, most notably
qc_stream_buf_alloc() usage.
Note that this commit inverts the accounting. Previously, it was
initially set to 0 and increment for each allocated buffer. Now, it is
set to the maximum value and decrement for each buf usage. This is
considered as clearer to use.
Define a new global keyword tune.quic.frontend.max-window-size. This
allows to set globally the maximum congestion window size for each QUIC
frontend connections.
The default value is 0. It is a special value which automatically derive
the size from the configured QUIC connection buffer limit. This is
similar to the previous "quic-cc-algo" behavior, which can be used to
override the maximum window size per bind line.
load_cfg_in_mem() can continuously reallocate memory in order to load an
extremely large input from /dev/stdin, until it fails with ENOMEM, which means
that process has consumed all available RAM. In case of containers and
virtualized environments it's not very good.
So, in order to prevent this, let's introduce MAX_CFG_SIZE as 10MB, which will
limit the size of input supplied via /dev/stdin.
Some systems require log formats in the CLF format and that meant that I
could not send my logs for proxies in mode tcp to those servers. This
implements a format that uses log variables that are compatble with TCP
mode frontends and replaces traditional HTTP values in the CLF format
to make them stand out. Instead of logging method and URI like this
"GET /example HTTP/1.1" it will log "TCP " and for a response code I
used "000" so it would be easy to separate from legitimate HTTP
traffic. Now your log servers that require a CLF format can see the
timings for TCP traffic as well as HTTP.
It is now possible to use "drop" keyword for "on" lines under a
log-profile section to specify that no log at all should be emitted for
the specified step (setting an empty format was not sufficient to do so
because only the log payload would be empty, not the log header, thus the
log would still be emitted).
It may be useful to selectively disable logging at specific steps for a
given log target (since the log profile may be set on log directives):
log-profile myprof
on request format "blabla" sd "custom sd"
on response drop
New testcase was added to reg-tests/log/log_profiles.vtc
ci_insert() is a function which allows to insert a string <str> of size
<len> at <pos> of the input buffer. This is the equivalent of
ci_insert_line2() but without inserting '\r\n'
As readcfgfile no longer opens configuration files and reads them with fgets,
but performs only the parsing of provided data, let's rename it to parse_cfg by
analogy with read_cfg in haproxy.c.
Let's call load_cfg_in_ram() helper for each configuration file to load it's
content in some area in memory. Adapt readcfgfile() parser function
respectively. In order to limit changes in its scope we give as an argument a
cfgfile structure, already filled in init_args() and in load_cfg_in_ram() with
file metadata and content.
Parser function (readcfgfile()) uses now fgets_from_mem() instead of standard
fgets from libc implementations.
SPOE filter parses its own configuration file, pointed by 'config' keyword in
the configuration already loaded in memory. So, let's allocate and fill for
this a supplementary cfgfile structure, which is not referenced in cfg_cfgfiles
list. This structure and the memory with content of SPOE filter configuration
are freed immediately in parse_spoe_flt(), when readcfgfile() returns.
HAProxy OpenTracing filter also uses its own configuration file. So, let's
follow the same logic as we do for SPOE filter.
Add fgets_from_mem() helper to read lines from configuration files, stored now
as memory chunks. In order to limit changes in the first-level parser code
(readcfgfile()), it is better to reimplement the standard fgets, i.e. to
have a fgets, which can read the serialized data line by line from some memory
area, instead of file stream, and can keep the same behaviour as libc
implementations fgets.
list_append_word() helper was used before only to chain configuration file names
in a list. As now we start to use cfgfile structure which represents entire file
in memory and its metadata, let's adapt this helper to use this structure and
let's rename it to list_append_cfgfile().
Adapt functions, which process configuration files and directories to use
cfgfile structure and list_append_cfgfile() instead of wordlist.
This and following commits serve to prepare loading configuration files in
memory, before parsing them, as we may need to parse some parts of
configuration in different moments of the startup sequence. This is a case of
the new master-worker initialization process. Here we need to read at first
only the global and the program sections and only after some steps
(forking worker, etc) the rest of the configuration.
Add a new structure cfgfile to keep configuration files metadata and content,
loaded somewhere in a memory. Instances of filled cfgfile structures could be
chained in a list, as the order in which they were loaded is important.
We now have a trace_ctx to hold the sess, conn, qc, stream and so on.
This will allow us to pass it across layers so that other helpers can
help fill them.
Ideally it should be passed as an argument to __trace_enabled() by
__trace() so that it can be passed back to the trace callback. But
it seems that trace callbacks are smart enough to figure all their
info when they need them.
With "follow" from one source to another, it becomes possible for a
source to automatically follow another source's tracked pointer. The
best example is the session:
- the "session" source is enabled and has a "lockon session"
-> its lockon_ptr is equal to the session when valid
- other sources (h1,h2,h3 etc) are configured for "follow session"
and will then automatically check if session's lockon_ptr matches
its own session, in which case tracing will be enabled for that
trace (no state change).
It's not necessary to start/pause/stop traces when using this, only
"follow" followed by a source with lockon enabled is needed. Some
combinations might work better than others. At the moment the session
is almost never known from the backend, but this may improve.
The meta-source "all" is supported for the follower so that all sources
will follow the tracked one.
Reuse newly defined tot_time structure to measure various values related
to a QCS lifetime.
First, a timer is used to comptabilize the total QCS lifetime. Then, two
other timers are used to account the total time during which Tx from
stream layer to MUX is blocked, either on lack of buffer or due to
flow-control.
These three timers are reported in qmux_dump_qcs_info(). Thus, they are
available in traces and for QUIC MUX debug string sample.
Define a new utility type tot_time. Its purpose is to be able to account
elapsed time accross multiple periods. Functions are defined to easily
start and stop measures, and return the current value.
Define a new xprt_ops callback named dump_info. This can be used to
extend MUX debug string with infos from the lower layer.
Implement dump_info for QUIC stack. For now, only minimal info are
reported : bytes in flight and size of the sending window. This should
allow to detect if the congestion controller is fine. These info are
reported via QUIC MUX debug string sample.
Extract trace code to dump QCC and QCS instances into dedicated
functions named qmux_dump_qc{c,s}_info(). This will allow to easily
print QCC/QCS infos outside of traces.
These are passed to the underlying mux to retrieve debug information
at the mux level (stream/connection) as a string that's meant to be
added to logs.
The API is quite complex just because we can't pass any info to the
bottom function. So we construct a union and pass the argument as an
int, and expect the callee to fill that with its buffer in return.
Most likely the mux->ctl and ->sctl API should be reworked before
the release to simplify this.
The functions take an optional argument that is a bit mask of the
layers to dump:
muxs=1
muxc=2
xprt=4
conn=8
sock=16
The default (0) logs everything available.
STREAM frames have dedicated handling on retransmission. A special check
is done to remove data already acked in case of duplicated frames, thus
only unacked data are retransmitted.
This handling is faulty in case of an empty STREAM frame with FIN set.
On retransmission, this frame does not cover any unacked range as it is
empty and is thus discarded. This may cause the transfer to freeze with
the client waiting indefinitely for the FIN notification.
To handle retransmission of empty FIN STREAM frame, qc_stream_desc layer
have been extended. A new flag QC_SD_FL_WAIT_FOR_FIN is set by MUX QUIC
when FIN has been transmitted. If set, it prevents qc_stream_desc to be
freed until FIN is acknowledged. On retransmission side,
qc_stream_frm_is_acked() has been updated. It now reports false if
FIN bit is set on the frame and qc_stream_desc has QC_SD_FL_WAIT_FOR_FIN
set.
This must be backported up to 2.6. However, this modifies heavily
critical section for ACK handling and retransmission. As such, it must
be backported only after a period of observation.
This issue can be reproduced by using the following socat command as
server to add delay between the response and connection closure :
$ socat TCP-LISTEN:<port>,fork,reuseaddr,crlf SYSTEM:'echo "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"; echo ""; sleep 1;'
On the client side, ngtcp2 can be used to simulate packet drop. Without
this patch, connection will be interrupted on QUIC idle timeout or
haproxy client timeout with ERR_DRAINING on ngtcp2 :
$ ngtcp2-client --exit-on-all-streams-close -r 0.3 <host> <port> "http://<host>:<port>/?s=32o"
Alternatively to ngtcp2 random loss, an extra haproxy patch can also be
used to force skipping the emission of the empty STREAM frame :
diff --git a/include/haproxy/quic_tx-t.h b/include/haproxy/quic_tx-t.h
index efbdfe687..1ff899acd 100644
--- a/include/haproxy/quic_tx-t.h
+++ b/include/haproxy/quic_tx-t.h
@@ -26,6 +26,8 @@ extern struct pool_head *pool_head_quic_cc_buf;
/* Flag a sent packet as being probing with old data */
#define QUIC_FL_TX_PACKET_PROBE_WITH_OLD_DATA (1UL << 5)
+#define QUIC_FL_TX_PACKET_SKIP_SENDTO (1UL << 6)
+
/* Structure to store enough information about TX QUIC packets. */
struct quic_tx_packet {
/* List entry point. */
diff --git a/src/quic_tx.c b/src/quic_tx.c
index 2f199ac3c..2702fc9b9 100644
--- a/src/quic_tx.c
+++ b/src/quic_tx.c
@@ -318,7 +318,7 @@ static int qc_send_ppkts(struct buffer *buf, struct ssl_sock_ctx *ctx)
tmpbuf.size = tmpbuf.data = dglen;
TRACE_PROTO("TX dgram", QUIC_EV_CONN_SPPKTS, qc);
- if (!skip_sendto) {
+ if (!skip_sendto && !(first_pkt->flags & QUIC_FL_TX_PACKET_SKIP_SENDTO)) {
int ret = qc_snd_buf(qc, &tmpbuf, tmpbuf.data, 0, gso);
if (ret < 0) {
if (gso && ret == -EIO) {
@@ -354,6 +354,7 @@ static int qc_send_ppkts(struct buffer *buf, struct ssl_sock_ctx *ctx)
qc->cntrs.sent_bytes_gso += ret;
}
}
+ first_pkt->flags &= ~QUIC_FL_TX_PACKET_SKIP_SENDTO;
b_del(buf, dglen + QUIC_DGRAM_HEADLEN);
qc->bytes.tx += tmpbuf.data;
@@ -2066,6 +2067,17 @@ static int qc_do_build_pkt(unsigned char *pos, const unsigned char *end,
continue;
}
+ switch (cf->type) {
+ case QUIC_FT_STREAM_8 ... QUIC_FT_STREAM_F:
+ if (!cf->stream.len && (qc->flags & QUIC_FL_CONN_TX_MUX_CONTEXT)) {
+ TRACE_USER("artificially drop packet with empty STREAM frame", QUIC_EV_CONN_TXPKT, qc);
+ pkt->flags |= QUIC_FL_TX_PACKET_SKIP_SENDTO;
+ }
+ break;
+ default:
+ break;
+ }
+
quic_tx_packet_refinc(pkt);
cf->pkt = pkt;
}
When a STREAM frame is retransmitted, a check is performed to remove
range of data already acked from it. This is useful when STREAM frames
are duplicated and splitted to cover different data ranges. The newly
retransmitted frame contains only unacked data.
This process is performed similarly in qc_dup_pkt_frms() and
qc_build_frms(). Refactor the code into a new function named
qc_stream_frm_is_acked(). It returns true if frame data are already
fully acked and retransmission can be avoided. If only a partial range
of data is acknowledged, frame content is updated to only cover the
unacked data.
This patch does not have any functional change. However, it simplifies
retransmission for STREAM frames. Also, it will be reused to fix
retransmission for empty STREAM frames with FIN set from the following
patch :
BUG/MEDIUM: quic: handle retransmit for standalone FIN STREAM
As such, it must be backported prior to it.
qc_stream_desc had a field <release> used as a boolean. Convert it with
a new <flags> field and QC_SD_FL_RELEASE value as equivalent.
The purpose of this patch is to be able to extend qc_stream_desc by
adding newer flags values. This patch is required for the following
patch
BUG/MEDIUM: quic: handle retransmit for standalone FIN STREAM
As such, it must be backported prior to it.
haproxy supports tunnel establishment through HTTP Upgrade mechanism.
Since the following commit, extended CONNECT is also supported for
HTTP/2 both on frontend and backend side.
commit 9bf957335e2c385b74901481f7a89c9565dfce53
MEDIUM: mux_h2: generate Extended CONNECT from htx upgrade
As specified by HTTP/2 rfc, "h2c" can be used by an HTTP/1.1 client to
request an upgrade to HTTP/2. In haproxy, this is not supported so it
silently ignores this. However, Connection and Upgrade headers are
forwarded as-is on the backend side.
If using HTTP/1 on the backend side and the server supports this upgrade
mechanism, haproxy won't be able to parse the HTTP response. If using
HTTP/2, mux backend tries to incorrectly convert the request to an
Extended CONNECT with h2c protocol, which may also prevent the response
to be transmitted.
To fix this, flag HTTP/1 request with "h2c" or "h2" token in an upgrade
header. On converting the header list to HTX, the upgrade header is
skipped if any of this token is present and the H1_MF_CONN_UPG flag is
removed.
This issue can easily be reproduced using curl --http2 argument to
connect to an HTTP/1 frontend.
This must be backported up to 2.4 after a period of observation.
Decode QUIC MUX connection and stream elements via qcc_show_flags() and
qcs_show_flags(). Flags definition have been moved outside of USE_QUIC
to ease compilation of flags binary.
Add ->get_info() new control layer callback definition to protocol struct to
retreive statiscal counters information at transport layer (TCPv4/TCPv6) identified by
an integer into a long long int.
Move the TCP specific code from get_tcp_info() to the tcp_get_info() control layer
function (src/proto_tcp.c) and define it as the ->get_info() callback for
TCPv4 and TCPv6.
Note that get_tcp_info() is called for several TCP sample fetches.
This patch is useful to support some of these sample fetches for QUIC and to
keep the code simple and easy to maintain.
Then reactivate HAVE_SSL_0RTT and HAVE_SSL_0RTT_QUIC for AWS-LC, which
were wrongly deactivated in f5353f2c ("MINOR: ssl: add HAVE_SSL_0RTT
constant").
Must be backported to 3.0.
There's a rare TOCTOU case that happens from time to time with maxconn 1
and multiple threads. Between the moment we see the queue full and the
moment we queue a request, it's possible that the last request on the
server or proxy ended and that no other one is left to offer it its place.
Given that all this code path is performance-critical and we cannot afford
to increase the lock duration, better recheck for the condition after
queueing. For this we need to be able to check for the condition and
cleanly dequeue a request. That's what this patch provides via the new
function pendconn_must_try_again(). It will catch more requests than
absolutely needed though it will catch them all. It may find that around
1/1000 of requests are at risk, though testing shows that in practice,
it's around 1 per million that really gets stuck (other ones benefit
from timing and finishing late requests). Maybe in the future some
conditions might be refined but it's harmless.
What happens to such requests is that they're dequeued and their pendconn
freed, so that the caller can decide to try to LB or queue them again. For
now the function is not used, it's just added separately for easier tracking.
Add ->state_cli() new callback to quic_cc_algo struct to define a
function called by the "show quic (cc|full)" commands to dump some information
about the congestion algorithm internal state currently in use by the QUIC
connections.
Implement this callback for CUBIC algorithm to dump its internal variables:
- K: (the time to reach the cubic curve inflexion point),
- last_w_max: the last maximum window value reached before intering
the last recovery period. This is also the window value at the
inflexion point of the cubic curve,
- wdiff: the difference between the current window value and last_w_max.
So negative before the inflexion point, and positive after.
In 2.5-dev9, commit 631c7e866 ("MEDIUM: h1: Force close mode for invalid
uses of T-E header") enforced a recently arrived new security rule in the
HTTP specification aiming at preventing a class of content-smuggling
attacks involving HTTP/1.0 agents. It consists in handling the very rare
T-E + C-L requests or responses in close mode.
It happens it does have an impact of a rare few and very old clients
(probably running insecure TLS stacks by the way) that continue to send
both with their POST requests. The impact is that for each and every
request they'll have to reconnect, possibly negotiating a full TLS
handshake that becomes harmful to the machine in terms of CPU computation.
This commit adds a new option "h1-do-not-close-on-insecure-transfer-encoding"
that does exactly what it says, it just asks not to close on such messages,
even though the message continues to be sanitized and C-L dropped. It means
that the risk is only between the sender and haproxy, which is limited, and
might be the only acceptable solution for such environments having to deal
with broken implementations.
The cases are so rare that it should not need to be backported, or in the
worst case, to the latest LTS if there is any demand.
Define a new quic-initial "send-retry" rule. This allows to force the
emission of a Retry packet on an initial without token instead of
instantiating a new QUIC connection.
Define a new quic-initial action named "reject". Contrary to dgram-drop,
the client is notified of the rejection by a CONNECTION_CLOSE with
CONNECTION_REFUSED error code.
To be able to emit the necessary CONNECTION_CLOSE frame, quic_conn is
instantiated, contrary to dgram-drop action. quic_set_connection_close()
is called immediatly after qc_new_conn() which prevents the handshake
startup.
To extend quic-initial rules, pass quic_dgram instance to argument for
the various actions. As such, quic_dgram is now supported as an obj_type
and can be used in session origin field.
Add ACL condition support for quic-initial rules. This requires the
extension of quic_parse_quic_initial() to parse an extra if/unless
block.
Only layer4 client samples are allowed to be used with quic-initial
rules. However, due to the early execution of quic-initial rules prior
to any connection instantiation, some samples are non supported.
To be able to use the 4 described samples, a dummy session is
instantiated before quic-initial rules execution. Its src and dst fields
are set from the received datagram values.
Implement a new set of rules labelled as quic-initial.
These rules as specific to QUIC. They are scheduled to be executed early
on Initial packet parsing, prior a new QUIC connection instantiation.
Contrary to tcp-request connection, this allows to reject traffic
earlier, most notably by avoiding unnecessary QUIC SSL handshake
processing.
A new module quic_rules is created. Its main function
quic_init_exec_rules() is called on Initial packet parsing in function
quic_rx_pkt_retrieve_conn().
For the moment, only "accept" and "dgram-drop" are valid actions. Both
are final. The latter drops silently the Initial packet instead of
allocating a new QUIC connection.
With AWS-LC, the aead part is covered by the EVP_AEAD API which
provides the correct EVP_aead_chacha20_poly1305(), however for header
protection it does not provides an EVP_CIPHER for chacha20.
This patch implements exceptions in the header protection code and use
EVP_CIPHER_CHACHA20 and EVP_CIPHER_CTX_CHACHA20 placeholders so we can
use the CRYPTO_chacha_20() primitive manually instead of the EVP_CIPHER
API.
This requires to check if we are using EVP_CIPHER_CTX_CHACHA20 when
doing EVP_CIPHER_CTX_free().
In order to prepare the code for using Chacha20 with the EVP_AEAD API,
both quic_tls_hp_decrypt() and quic_tls_hp_encrypt() need an extra key
argument.
Indeed Chacha20 does not exists as an EVP_CIPHER in AWS-LC, so the key
won't be embedded into the EVP_CIPHER_CTX, so we need an extra parameter
to use it.
Some of the crypto functions used for headers protection in QUIC are
named with an "aes" name even thought they are not used for AES
encryption only.
This patch renames these "aes" to "hp" so it is clearer.
The QUIC crypto is using the EVP_CIPHER API in order to achieve
authenticated encryption, this was the API which was used with OpenSSL.
With libraries that inspires from BoringSSL (libreSSL and AWS-LC), the
AEAD algorithms are implemented using the EVP_AEAD API.
This patch converts the call to the EVP_CIPHER API when called in the
contex of AEAD cryptography for QUIC.
The patch defines some QUIC_AEAD macros that can be either EVP_CIPHER or
EVP_AEAD depending on the library.
This was mainly done for AWS-LC but this could be useful for other
libraries. This should finally allow to use CHACHA20_POLY1305 with
AWS-LC.
This patch allows to use the following ciphers with the EVP_AEAD API:
- TLS1_3_CK_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
- TLS1_3_CK_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
AWS-LC does not implement TLS1_3_CK_AES_128_CCM_SHA256 and
TLS1_3_CK_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 requires some hack for headers
protection which will come in another patch.
Add a new struct member to sft structure named e_processed in order to
track the total number of events processed by sft applets.
sink_forward_oc_io_handler() and sink_forward_io_handler() now make use
of ring_dispatch_messages() optional value added in the previous commit
in order to increase the number of processed events.
ring_dispatch_messages() now takes an optional argument <processed> which
must point to a size_t counter when provided.
When provided, the value is updated to the number of messages processed
by the function.
