How to check for memory leaks

How to check for memory leaks

[Larry Finger]

What is the best way to check if there is a memory leak?

If I start a ping running on my system using the rtl8187 driver, and nothing
else active on my system, I see an increase in the "slab" value in /proc/meminfo
of about 65 kB/minute. Is this indicative of a memory leak? When I run the same
test with p54usb, the increase is only 20 kB/min.

Thanks,

Larry

Re: How to check for memory leaks

[Frédéric Weisbecker]

2008/12/8 Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>:
> What is the best way to check if there is a memory leak?
>
> If I start a ping running on my system using the rtl8187 driver, and nothing
> else active on my system, I see an increase in the "slab" value in /proc/meminfo
> of about 65 kB/minute. Is this indicative of a memory leak? When I run the same
> test with p54usb, the increase is only 20 kB/min.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Larry


Hi,

You could have a look on kmemleak: http://www.procode.org/kmemleak/
It's up to date version is on the arm development git branch (topic kmemleak):
http://www.linux-arm.org/git?p=linux-2.6.git;a=summary

Re: How to check for memory leaks

[J.R. Mauro]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 5:33 PM, Frédéric Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/12/8 Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>:
>> What is the best way to check if there is a memory leak?
>>
>> If I start a ping running on my system using the rtl8187 driver, and nothing

Is this the driver in the staging tree or a different one?

>> else active on my system, I see an increase in the "slab" value in /proc/meminfo
>> of about 65 kB/minute. Is this indicative of a memory leak? When I run the same
>> test with p54usb, the increase is only 20 kB/min.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Larry
>
>
> Hi,
>
> You could have a look on kmemleak: http://www.procode.org/kmemleak/
> It's up to date version is on the arm development git branch (topic kmemleak):
> http://www.linux-arm.org/git?p=linux-2.6.git;a=summary
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Re: How to check for memory leaks

[Larry Finger]

J.R. Mauro wrote:
> 
> Is this the driver in the staging tree or a different one?

This is the driver in wireless-testing, which is essentially the same as the one
in mainline.

Larry

Re: How to check for memory leaks

[Larry Finger]

Frédéric Weisbecker wrote:
> 
> You could have a look on kmemleak: http://www.procode.org/kmemleak/
> It's up to date version is on the arm development git branch (topic kmemleak):
> http://www.linux-arm.org/git?p=linux-2.6.git;a=summary
> 

I downloaded the git tree, but x86_64 architecture won't build in the kmemtest
branch. I've built an i386 kernel that I will install on a different machine.
Once I get that working, I'll try to fix the other problem and post a patch.

Larry

Re: How to check for memory leaks

[Hinko Kocevar]

Larry Finger wrote:
> What is the best way to check if there is a memory leak?
> 
> If I start a ping running on my system using the rtl8187 driver, and nothing
> else active on my system, I see an increase in the "slab" value in /proc/meminfo
> of about 65 kB/minute. Is this indicative of a memory leak? When I run the same
> test with p54usb, the increase is only 20 kB/min.
> 

Also see cat /proc/slabinfo (you need to compile some debugging feature to get access to 
/proc/slabinfo).

HTTH,
Hinko

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