Dear Folks, I am writing to ask for some clues dealing with an intolerable memory leak of an application that embeds Perl.
The application is Nagios 2.0b1 (http://www.Nagios.ORG), a GPL availability monitor (like Big Brother or Mon). Nagios 1.2 would schedule service checks (eg of someones web frontend to their database), popen() a pipe to the responsible process (quite often a Perl program) and read the results. Nagios 2.0 retains this service check model (I think) but adds some POSIX threads to handle the external command queue (for CGIs to ask for checks to be rescheduled etc). 1.2 + 5.005 Perl (FreeBSD 4.10 base system) leaks acceptably. 2.0b1 + 5.8.5 threaded Perl (threaded (FreeBSD 4.10/pthread library/FreeBSD port built with -DWITH_THREADS [from the port]) has an unacceptable leak rate (the SIZE of the Nagios process embedding Perl [shown by top] increases at about 1-2 MB/hour. At the moment I manage this by monitoring the size of the process with a cron job and restarting if its over a threshold. However, it would be nice to see my abuse of Perl unequivocally succeed in this application rather than Perl be abused instead [as well] as me). (IRRC Nag 1.2 + threaded Perl also had the bad leak rate) The FreeBSD 4.x Perl port does not build a threaded Perl by default, however it appears to function Ok. All suggestions as to where to start dealing with this problem are welcome. I am not a professional developer so am unfamiliar with identifying and resolving leaks. It seems to me (since few use embedded Perl but far more use Nagios without it) that the fault is in either the FreeBSD Perl or the embedding support (the use of the Perl API hasn't changed between 1.2 and 2.0, nor has the Perl shim that is called by Nagios). Instrumenting the Perl shim (copied from perlembed) that determines whether the Perl service check program is feasable as is any amount of testbedding. Yours sincerely. -- Stanley Hopcroft IP Australia Ph: (02) 6283 3189 Fax: (02) 6281 1353 PO Box 200 Woden ACT 2606 http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au tsitc> perl -V Summary of my perl5 (revision 5 version 8 subversion 5) configuration: Platform: osname=freebsd, osvers=4.10-release-p5, archname=i386-freebsd-thread-multi-64int uname='freebsd tsitc.aipo.gov.au 4.10-release-p5 freebsd 4.10-release-p5 #14: fri jan 7 12:49:27 est 2005 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:usrobjusrsrcsystsitc i386 ' config_args='-sde -Dprefix=/usr/local -Darchlib=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5/mach -Dprivlib=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5 -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5/perl/man/man3 -Dman1dir=/usr/local/man/man1 -Dsitearch=/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/mach -Dsitelib=/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5 -Dscriptdir=/usr/local/bin -Dsiteman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5/man/man3 -Dsiteman1dir=/usr/local/man/man1 -Ui_malloc -Ui_iconv -Uinstallusrbinperl -Dcc=cc -Doptimize=-O -pipe -Duseshrplib -Dccflags=-DAPPLLIB_EXP="/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5/BSDPAN" -Ud_dosuid -Ui_gdbm -Dusethreads=y -Dusemymalloc=n -Duse64bitint' hint=recommended, useposix=true, d_sigaction=define usethreads=define use5005threads=undef useithreads=define usemultiplicity=define useperlio=define d_sfio=undef uselargefiles=define usesocks=undef use64bitint=define use64bitall=undef uselongdouble=undef usemymalloc=n, bincompat5005=undef Compiler: cc='cc', ccflags ='-DAPPLLIB_EXP="/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5/BSDPAN" -DHAS_FPSETMASK -DHAS_FLOATINGPOINT_H -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -I/usr/local/include', optimize='-O -pipe ', cppflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP="/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5/BSDPAN" -DHAS_FPSETMASK -DHAS_FLOATINGPOINT_H -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -I/usr/local/include' ccversion='', gccversion='2.95.4 20020320 [FreeBSD]', gccosandvers='' intsize=4, longsize=4, ptrsize=4, doublesize=8, byteorder=12345678 d_longlong=define, longlongsize=8, d_longdbl=define, longdblsize=12 ivtype='long long', ivsize=8, nvtype='double', nvsize=8, Off_t='off_t', lseeksize=8 alignbytes=4, prototype=define Linker and Libraries: ld='cc', ldflags ='-pthread -Wl,-E -L/usr/local/lib' libpth=/usr/lib /usr/local/lib libs=-lgdbm -lm -lcrypt -lutil -lc_r perllibs=-lm -lcrypt -lutil -lc_r libc=, so=so, useshrplib=true, libperl=libperl.so gnulibc_version='' Dynamic Linking: dlsrc=dl_dlopen.xs, dlext=so, d_dlsymun=undef, ccdlflags=' -Wl,-R/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5/mach/CORE' cccdlflags='-DPIC -fPIC', lddlflags='-shared -L/usr/local/lib' Characteristics of this binary (from libperl): Compile-time options: MULTIPLICITY USE_ITHREADS USE_64_BIT_INT USE_LARGE_FILES PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT Built under freebsd Compiled at Jan 7 2005 22:15:47 @INC: /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/mach /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5/BSDPAN /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5/mach /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.5 . tsitc>
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