Re: struct pid memory leak

From: Eric Dumazet
Date: Sat Jan 23 2016 - 14:50:24 EST


On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 10:46 AM, Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 7:40 PM, Willy Tarreau <w@xxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 07:14:33PM +0100, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
>>> I've attached my .config.
>>> Also run this program in a parallel loop. I think it's leaking not
>>> every time, probably some race is involved.
>>
>> Thank you. Just in order to confirm, am I supposed to see the
>> messages you quoted in dmesg ?
>
>
> I think the simplest way to confirm that you can reproduce it locally
> is to check /proc/slabinfo. When I run this program in a parallel
> loop, number of objects in pid cache was constantly growing:
>
> # cat /proc/slabinfo | grep pid
> pid 297 532 576 28 4 : tunables 0 0
> 0 : slabdata 19 19 0
> ...
> pid 412 532 576 28 4 : tunables 0 0
> 0 : slabdata 19 19 0
> ...
> pid 1107 1176 576 28 4 : tunables 0 0
> 0 : slabdata 42 42 0
> ...
> pid 1545 1652 576 28 4 : tunables 0 0
> 0 : slabdata 59 59 0
>
>
> If you want to use kmemleak, then you need to run this program in a
> parallel loop for some time, then stop it and then:
>
> $ echo scan > /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
> $ cat /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
>
> If kmemleak has detected any leaks, cat will show them. I noticed that
> kmemleak can delay leaks with significant delay, so usually I do scan
> at least 5 times.

Note that kmemleak is not needed.

Just run a normal kernel (eventually using slab_nomerge=1 boot cmd to
make sure 'pid' slab is not shared)

It seems that bug is rather old, as linux-4.0 has it.