tcpdump mailing list archives
Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or kernel
From: "Gianluca Varenni" <gianluca.varenni () cacetech com>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:35:28 -0700
Hi all.I just discovered an interesting leak with the libpcap 1.0 or the current top-of-tree.
On Fedora 10, kernel 2.6.27.5 or 2.6.27.12, there is a memory leak by which a simple program like this one will eventually use all the memory on the system (as reported by top) and eventually the application gets killed by the OS (and as a side effect the graphical system gets killed too and restarts). This happens only if the usbmon devices are listed (I tried on a VM disabling and enabling the virtual USB controller. No VM tools are installed on the guest, we are able to replicate it on a physical machine).
The interesting part is that in top the memory usage of the process is always < 1%, but the total amount of free memory on the system goes down to few megabytes, until the OS finally kills the process.
Here is the small test application. int main() { pcap_if_t *ifs; char errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE]; do { if (pcap_findalldevs(&ifs, errbuf) != 0) { printf("error"); break; } pcap_freealldevs(ifs); } while(1==1); return 1; } Has anyone experienced that? Have a nice dayGV
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Current thread:
- Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or kernel Gianluca Varenni (Jul 10)
- Re: Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or kernel Guy Harris (Jul 10)
- Re: Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or kernel Gianluca Varenni (Jul 10)
- Re: Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or kernel Guy Harris (Jul 11)
- Re: Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or kernel Gianluca Varenni (Jul 13)
- Re: Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or kernel Gianluca Varenni (Jul 10)
- Re: Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or Stephen Donnelly (Jul 12)
- Re: Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or kernel Guy Harris (Jul 10)