[OpenSIPS-Users] questions about WARNING:core:utimer_ticker

Bogdan-Andrei Iancu bogdan at opensips.org
Thu Jul 17 15:17:17 UTC 2025


Hi Richard,

Those warning means that a certain timer is really busy, overlapping 
between executions - here is about the tm-utimer, responsible for 
performing the stateful retransmissions (upon missing replies). Such a 
timer may get slow due to TCP stuff, like trying to retransmit to 
disconnected connections.

Best regards,

Bogdan-Andrei Iancu

OpenSIPS Founder and Developer
   https://www.opensips-solutions.com
   https://www.siphub.com

On 26.06.2025 01:24, Richard Revels via Users wrote:
>
> Ah, Thank You. Yes, I have come to the same conclusion that those 
> messages are after the problem rather than before.   I didn't take 
> enough time to really dig into the logs before send that message I reckon.
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 25, 2025 at 1:20 PM Gregory Massel via Users 
> <users at lists.opensips.org> wrote:
>
>     I get these on my most lightly loaded system, yet none at all on
>     my most heavily loaded system...
>
>     Although the error is generic enough that, on its own, it doesn't
>     really help to determine what the problem is, on my system the
>     tm-utimer messages are often accompanied by TLS errors such as:
>
>     ERROR:tls_wolfssl:_wolfssl_tls_conn_shutdown: no ssl data
>
>     ERROR:tm:msg_send: send() to x.x.x.x:5061 for proto tls/3 failed
>
>     (Note: While I'm currently using WolfSSL, I previously used
>     OpenSSL and experienced similar issues.)
>
>     That's not to say that you're getting the error for the same
>     reason as me; just to point out that there should be related
>     errors before or after the tm-utimer warnings. It may be tricky to
>     find them on a system with your sorts of volumes as, in my case,
>     the TLS errors are typically just over 2 minutes AFTER the
>     tm-utimer warnings. On a busy system, a lot of unrelated log
>     entries are likely to generate in between.
>
>     The low-load system with these issue has outbound TLS. The
>     high-load system without these issues does no outbound TLS; the
>     only TLS it handles are inbound WSS connections.
>
>     With regard to your question about threads, take a look at:
>     https://www.opensips.org/Documentation/Script-CoreParameters-3-4#tcp_workers
>     https://www.opensips.org/Documentation/Script-CoreParameters-3-4#udp_workers
>
>     --Greg
>
>     On 2025-06-24 18:52, Richard Revels via Users wrote:
>>     Greetings,
>>     I have started having issues with some proxies running opensips
>>     3.2.19 and some others running 3.4.12
>>     With approximately 230 cps and 7300 dialogs the proxy starts
>>     emitting log messages like
>>
>>     Jun 24 15:42:18 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:utimer_ticker: utimer task <tm-utimer> already
>>     scheduled 150 ms ago (now 3671145080 ms), delaying execution
>>     Jun 24 15:42:18 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:utimer_ticker: utimer task <tm-utimer> already
>>     scheduled 200 ms ago (now 3671145130 ms), delaying execution
>>     Jun 24 15:42:18 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:utimer_ticker: utimer task <tm-utimer> already
>>     scheduled 300 ms ago (now 3671145230 ms), delaying execution
>>     Jun 24 15:42:18 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:utimer_ticker: utimer task <tm-utimer> already
>>     scheduled 400 ms ago (now 3671145330 ms), delaying execution
>>     Jun 24 15:42:18 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:utimer_ticker: utimer task <tm-utimer> already
>>     scheduled 500 ms ago (now 3671145430 ms), delaying execution
>>     Jun 24 15:42:19 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:utimer_ticker: utimer task <tm-utimer> already
>>     scheduled 600 ms ago (now 3671145530 ms), delaying execution
>>     Jun 24 15:42:19 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:utimer_ticker: utimer task <tm-utimer> already
>>     scheduled 700 ms ago (now 3671145630 ms), delaying execution
>>     Jun 24 15:42:19 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:utimer_ticker: utimer task <tm-utimer> already
>>     scheduled 800 ms ago (now 3671145730 ms), delaying execution
>>     Jun 24 15:42:19 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:utimer_ticker: utimer task <tm-utimer> already
>>     scheduled 900 ms ago (now 3671145830 ms), delaying execution
>>     Jun 24 15:42:19 sip-proxy.local
>>     /usr/local/opensips/sbin/opensips[190328]:
>>     WARNING:core:timer_ticker: timer task <tm-timer> already
>>     scheduled 1000 ms ago (now 3671145830 ms), delaying execution
>>
>>
>>     The cpu usage on the threads goes from 3% - 11% depending on
>>     thread to 30% across the board.
>>
>>     I have been running these versions of opensips for some time now
>>     (months for 3.4 and years for 3.2) and do see occasional latency
>>     in db or rest connection responses but only recently have started
>>     having this issue.
>>
>>     So,
>>
>>     How are SIP calls distributed across the processing threads?  I
>>     was thinking it would be round robin w/ attention given to busy
>>     or not.  but it seems like the lower pid threads do a lot more
>>     work on these proxies
>>
>>     What are possible causes of the timers having trouble completing
>>     tasks?  is it cpu use, waiting on some other task to finish,
>>     combination or more?
>>
>>     Is there tuning that can be done to have more timer handling
>>     threads?  i tried this with modparam("tm", "timer_partitions")
>>     which seemed to make the problem worse
>>
>>     Thank you in advance for any guidance you can give me on
>>     troubleshooting this issue.
>>     Richard Revels
>>
>>
>>
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