linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2.6.28-rc5 00/11] Kernel memory leak detector (updated)

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Date:	Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:10:31 +0000
From:	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2.6.28-rc5 00/11] Kernel memory leak detector (updated)

On Thu, 2008-11-20 at 13:22 +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com> wrote:
> I'd like to try it in the -tip automated testing setup, provided the 
> few details i just commented on are solved, and provided that these 
> things are addressed as well:
> 
> > Things still to be done:
> > 
> > - kernel thread to scan and report leaked objects periodically
> >   (currently done only when reading the /sys/kernel/debug/memleak
> >   file)
> > - run-time and boot-time configuration like task stacks scanning,
> >   disabling kmemleak, enabling/disabling the automatic scanning
> 
> the .config driven automatic "report currently known/suspected leaks 
> 60 seconds after bootup" feature would be nice to have. Should be 
> fairly easy to add, right? Otherwise i'd have no good way of getting a 
> leak report out of it, in an automated way.

This can be easily done and it will be part of the automatic scanning
mentioned above (after the first scan, I think a scan every 10 min would
be enough). The only issue is that currently a leak is reported after it
was found at least a number of times (the 2nd time by default) to avoid
transient reports where a pointer was held in registers for example. A
better approach might be to check the allocation jiffies and ignore the
very recent ones.

As for reporting, I think it should print a diff with the previous scan
otherwise you may end up with duplicated information in the log.

I'll look at implementing this over the following days and re-post.
Thanks for the other comments as well.

-- 
Catalin

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