Detecting Memory Leaks

[pardsbane at offthehill.org (Josh Pollak)]

Assuming this is a C/C++ application, have you tried debugging with 
mpatrol or electric fence? If your application runs for many days on 
end, perhaps you can figure out a way to exercise it more than normal, 
in order to simulate an extended period of use. After running with 
mpatrol for a while, it should output a log file detailing all of your 
new's and deletes (or malloc / frees), which you can then begin to hunt 
down.

Quick hack: Schedule your application to restart ever 30 days. That 
should free your ram, but its a dirty hack.

-Josh

On Jul 15, 2004, at 4:01 PM, Samuel Donham wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> Normally, I wouldn't ask for help with work-related problems, but I'm 
> out
> of ideas.  If anyone can provide a reasonable answer to this, I'm 
> bringing
> a stack of free pizzas to the next BLU meeting.
>
> One of my clients claims that I have a memory leak in one of our
> applications.  He claims that 'top' reports my app is slowly consuming
> more memory after running for 30 days (now 20 megs, up from 8 when it 
> was
> first started).  Perhaps there is a memory leak, but I don't think 
> 'top'
> is a good indicator of one ('free' would be much better).  In addition,
> I've searched high and low for the leak with no success.  I've also run
> Valgrind (http://valgrind.kde.org) on my app, with no report of a leak.
>
> My question is, does anyone have any creative ideas to prove that a 
> leak
> does NOT exist?  It's far easier to prove that one does exist than to
> prove it does not.  Knowing that the memory will likely be released 
> after
> some time, I need to prove this but it will take months for the app to 
> run
> in order to so.  I would like to limit the amount of memory the app is
> allowed to consume.  I've tried using 'ulimit,' but the app repeatedly
> goes over the limit (soft and hard).  Using '/etc/security' may work, 
> but
> I'm reluctant to try for it's on a per-user basis, and I would like a
> per-process basis.
>
> Any ideas?  What's YOUR favorite means of detecting memory leaks?  
> Lastly,
> what kind of pizza/soda  do you like?
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks guys, see you at the 
> next
> meeting.
> -sam
>
>
>
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