Re: [Valgrind-developers] What is this failure?

[Robert W. <rj...@du...>]

> However, the same sort of malloc() followed by a free() was
> done a number of times earlier. If vg holds on to freed
> memory then there may be a problem. The machine is 1GB memory
> and 2GB swap and abour 450MB of swap was used at the time
> of failure.

Valgrind does hold on to memory for a certain length of time after it's
been freed.  This is to catch things like this:

  x =3D malloc(10);
  free(x);
  y =3D malloc(10);
  *x =3D 0;

If the second malloc happed to return the same value as the first, the
invalid write to *x would never be caught.

However, it doesn't keep these forever, and I had assumed it would use
that pool when it ran out of memory.  Hmm.  Too tired to look at the
code now, but it's in there somewhere.  Search for freed_list.

Regards,
 Robert.

--=20
Robert Walsh
Amalgamated Durables, Inc.  -  "We don't make the things you buy."
Email: rj...@du...