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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2009-09-11 09:16:22 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2009-09-11 09:16:22 -0700
commit1b195b170da6d75abafa290deeb8863dc8a4d79b (patch)
treef14c0598958171658938e4a330ed8d44fd7eb698 /Documentation
parent2490138cb785d299d898b579fa2874a59a3d321a (diff)
parentaddd72c1a917091f4bb5e699e307c4c4553f6fd3 (diff)
Merge branch 'kmemleak' of git://linux-arm.org/linux-2.6
* 'kmemleak' of git://linux-arm.org/linux-2.6: kmemleak: Improve the "Early log buffer exceeded" error message kmemleak: fix sparse warning for static declarations kmemleak: fix sparse warning over overshadowed flags kmemleak: move common painting code together kmemleak: add clear command support kmemleak: use bool for true/false questions kmemleak: Do no create the clean-up thread during kmemleak_disable() kmemleak: Scan all thread stacks kmemleak: Don't scan uninitialized memory when kmemcheck is enabled kmemleak: Ignore the aperture memory hole on x86_64 kmemleak: Printing of the objects hex dump kmemleak: Do not report alloc_bootmem blocks as leaks kmemleak: Save the stack trace for early allocations kmemleak: Mark the early log buffer as __initdata kmemleak: Dump object information on request kmemleak: Allow rescheduling during an object scanning
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/kmemleak.txt31
1 files changed, 31 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/kmemleak.txt b/Documentation/kmemleak.txt
index 89068030b01..34f6638aa5a 100644
--- a/Documentation/kmemleak.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kmemleak.txt
@@ -27,6 +27,13 @@ To trigger an intermediate memory scan:
# echo scan > /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
+To clear the list of all current possible memory leaks:
+
+ # echo clear > /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
+
+New leaks will then come up upon reading /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
+again.
+
Note that the orphan objects are listed in the order they were allocated
and one object at the beginning of the list may cause other subsequent
objects to be reported as orphan.
@@ -42,6 +49,9 @@ Memory scanning parameters can be modified at run-time by writing to the
scan=<secs> - set the automatic memory scanning period in seconds
(default 600, 0 to stop the automatic scanning)
scan - trigger a memory scan
+ clear - clear list of current memory leak suspects, done by
+ marking all current reported unreferenced objects grey
+ dump=<addr> - dump information about the object found at <addr>
Kmemleak can also be disabled at boot-time by passing "kmemleak=off" on
the kernel command line.
@@ -86,6 +96,27 @@ avoid this, kmemleak can also store the number of values pointing to an
address inside the block address range that need to be found so that the
block is not considered a leak. One example is __vmalloc().
+Testing specific sections with kmemleak
+---------------------------------------
+
+Upon initial bootup your /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak output page may be
+quite extensive. This can also be the case if you have very buggy code
+when doing development. To work around these situations you can use the
+'clear' command to clear all reported unreferenced objects from the
+/sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak output. By issuing a 'scan' after a 'clear'
+you can find new unreferenced objects; this should help with testing
+specific sections of code.
+
+To test a critical section on demand with a clean kmemleak do:
+
+ # echo clear > /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
+ ... test your kernel or modules ...
+ # echo scan > /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
+
+Then as usual to get your report with:
+
+ # cat /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
+
Kmemleak API
------------