Valgrind HOWTO

Deepak P.


pdeepak16@vsnl.com
               

Sandeep S.


sandeep_gect@yahoo.com
                

24 August 2002

Revision History
Revision 1.12002-09-15Revised by: tab
Converted to XML 4.1.2, added gfdl, reviewed, author revisions
Revision 1.02002-08-24Revised by: SS
Initial release

Table of Contents
1. Background
2. Introduction
2.1. Purpose
2.2. Acknowledgments
2.3. Copyright and Distribution Policy
2.4. Feedback and Corrections
3. Getting it Installed
3.1. Getting Valgrind
3.2. Installing
4. A Closer View
4.1. Why Valgrind?
4.2. Usage
4.3. Limitations and Dependencies of Valgrind.
5. Let's Go Deeper
5.1. How Valgrind Tracks Validity of Each Byte
5.2. Cache Profiling
6. Concluding Remarks
7. References
A. GNU Free Documentation License
A.1. PREAMBLE
A.2. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
A.3. VERBATIM COPYING
A.4. COPYING IN QUANTITY
A.5. MODIFICATIONS
A.6. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
A.7. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
A.8. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A.9. TRANSLATION
A.10. TERMINATION
A.11. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
A.12. How to use this License for your documents

1. Background

Dynamic storage allocation plays an important role in C programming; it is also the breeding ground of numerous hard-to-track-down bugs. Freeing an allocated block twice, running off the edge of the malloc'ed buffer, and failing to keep track of addresses of allocated blocks are common errors which frustrate the programmer - debugging them is very difficult due to the errors manifesting themselves as "mysterious behavior" at places far off from the point where the programmer actually committed the blunder.


2. Introduction


2.4. Feedback and Corrections

Kindly forward feedback and criticism to Deepak.P or/and Sandeep.S. We shall be indebted to anybody who points out errors and inaccuracies in this document; we will rectify them as soon as we are informed.


3. Getting it Installed


4. A Closer View


4.2. Usage


4.2.3. Types of Errors with Examples

Valgrind can only really detect two types of errors: use of illegal address and use of undefined values. Nevertheless, this is enough to discover all sorts of memory management problems in a program. Some common errors are given below.


4.2.3.4. Mismatched Use of Functions

In C++ you can allocate and free memory using more than one function, but the following rules must be followed:

Sample program:


#include <stdlib.h>
int main()
{
        int *p, i;
        p = ( int* ) malloc(10*sizeof(int));
        for(i = 0;i < 10;i++)
                p[i] = i;
        delete(p);                /* Error: function mismatch */
        return 0;
}

Output by valgrind is:


             ==1066== ERROR SUMMARY: 1 errors from 1 contexts (suppressed:
0 from 0)
             ==1066== malloc/free: in use at exit: 0 bytes in 0 blocks.
             ==1066== malloc/free: 1 allocs, 1 frees, 40 bytes allocated.
             ==1066== For a detailed leak analysis,  rerun with:
--leak-check=yes
             ==1066== For counts of detected errors, rerun with: -v

>From the above "ERROR SUMMARY" it is clear that there is 0 bytes in 0 blocks in use at exit, which means that the malloc'd have been freed by delete. Therefore this is not a problem in Linux, but this program may crash on some other platform.


5. Let's Go Deeper

Valgrind simulates an Intel x86 processor and runs our test program in this synthetic processor. The two processors are not exactly same. Valgrind is compiled into a shared object, valgrind.so. A shell script valgrind sets the LD_PRELOAD environment variable to point to valgrind.so. This causes the .so to be loaded as an extra library to any subsequently executed dynamically-linked ELF binary, permitting the program to be debugged.

The dynamic linker calls the initialization function of Valgrind. Then the synthetic CPU takes control from the real CPU. In the memory there may be some other .so files. The dynamic linker calls the initialization function of all such .so files. Now the dynamic linker calls the main of the loaded program. When main returns, the synthetic CPU calls the finalization function of valgrind.so. During the execution of the finalization function, summary of all errors detected are printed and memory leaks are checked. Finalization function exits giving back the control from the synthetic CPU to the real one.


5.1. How Valgrind Tracks Validity of Each Byte

For every byte processed, the synthetic processor maintains 9 bits, 8 'V' bits and 1 'A' bit. The 'V' bits indicate the validity of the 8 bits in the byte and the 'A' bit indicates validity of the byte address. These valid-value(V) bits are checked only in two situations:

  1. when data is used for address generation,

  2. when control flow decision is to be made.

In any of these two situations, if the data is found to be undefined an error report will be generated. But no error reports are generated while copying or adding undefined data.

However the case with floating-point data is different. During a floating-point read instruction the 'V' bits corresponding to the data are checked. Thus copying of uninitialized value will produce error in case of floating-point numbers.


#include <stdlib.h>
int main()
{
        int *p, *a;
        p = malloc(10*sizeof(int));
        a = malloc(10*sizeof(int));
        a[3] = p[3];
        free(a);
        free(p);
        return 0;
}

/*  produce no errors */


#include <stdlib.h>
int main()
{
        float *p, *a;
        p = malloc(10*sizeof(float));
        a = malloc(10*sizeof(float));
        a[3] = p[3];
        free(a);
        free(p);
        return 0;
}

/* produces error */

All bytes that are in memory but not in CPU have an associated valid-address(A) bit, which indicates whether the corresponding memory location is accessible by the program. When a program starts, the 'A' bits corresponding to each global variables are set. When a call malloc, new or any other memory allocating function is made, the 'A' bits corresponding to the allocated bytes are set. Upon freeing the allocated block using free/new/new‘’ the corresponding 'A' bits are cleared. While doing a system call the 'A' bits are changed appropriately.

When values are loaded from memory the 'A' bits corresponding to each bytes are checked by Valgrind, and if the 'A' bit corresponding to a byte is set then its 'V' bits is checked. If the 'V' bits are not set, an error will be generated and the 'V' bits are set to indicate validity. This avoids long chain of errors. If the 'A' bit corresponding to a loaded byte is 0 then its 'V' bits are forced to set, despite the value being invalid.

Have a look on the following program. Run it.


#include <stdlib.h>
int main()
{
        int *p, j;
        p = malloc(5*sizeof(int));
        j = p[5];
        if (p[5] == 1)
                i = p[5]+1;
        free(p);
        return 0;
}

Here two errors occur. Both of them are due to the accessing address location p + sizeof(int)*5 which is not allocated to the program. During the execution of j = p[5], since the address p + sizeof(int)*5 is invalid, the 'V' bits of 4 bytes starting at location p+sizeof(int)*5 are forced to set. Therefore uninitialized value occurs neither during the execution of j = p[5] nor during the execution of if(p[5]==1).


5.2. Cache Profiling

Modern x86 machines use two levels of caching. These levels are L1 and L2, in which L1 is a split cache that consists of Instruction cache(I1) and Data cache(D1). L2 is a unified cache.

The configuration of a cache means its size, associativity and number of lines. If the data requested by the processor appears in the upper level it is called a hit. If the data is not found in the upper level, the request is called a miss. The lower level in the hierarchy is then accessed to retrieve the block containing requested data. In modern machines L1 is first searched for data/instruction requested by the processor. If it is a hit then that data/instruction is copied to some register in the processor. Otherwise L2 is searched. If it is a hit then data/instruction is copied to L1 and from there it is copied to a register. If the request to L2 also is a miss then main memory has to be accessed.

Valgrind can simulate the cache, meaning it can display the things that occur in the cache when a program is running. For this, first compile your program with -g option as usual. Then use the shell script cachegrind instead of valgrind.

Sample output:


==7436== I1  refs:      12,841
==7436== I1  misses:       238
==7436== L2i misses:       237
==7436== I1  miss rate:   1.85%
==7436== L2i miss rate:   1.84%
==7436==
==7436== D   refs:       5,914  (4,626 rd + 1,288 wr)
==7436== D1  misses:       357  (  324 rd +    33 wr)
==7436== L2d misses:       352  (  319 rd +    33 wr)
==7436== D1  miss rate:    6.0% (  7.0%   +   2.5%  )
==7436== L2d miss rate:    5.9% (  6.8%   +   2.5%  )
==7436==
==7436== L2 refs:          595  (  562 rd +    33 wr)
==7436== L2 misses:        589  (  556 rd +    33 wr)
==7436== L2 miss rate:     3.1% (  3.1%   +   2.5%  )


   L2i misses means the number of instruction misses that occur in L2
cache.
   L2d misses means the number of data misses that occur in L2 cache.
   Total number of data references = Number of reads + Number of writes.
   Miss rate means fraction of misses that are not found in the upper
level.

The shell script cachegrind also produces a file, cachegrind.out, that contains line-by-line cache profiling information which is not humanly understandable. A program vg_annotate can easily interpret this information. If the shell script vg_annotate is used without any arguments it will read the file cachegrind.out and produce an output which is humanly understandable.

When C, C++ or assembly source programs are passed as input to vg_annotate it displays the number of cache reads, writes, misses etc.


I1 cache:         16384 B, 32 B, 4-way associative
D1 cache:         16384 B, 32 B, 4-way associative
L2 cache:         262144 B, 32 B, 8-way associative
Command:          ./a.out
Events recorded:  Ir I1mr I2mr Dr D1mr D2mr Dw D1mw D2mw
Events shown:     Ir I1mr I2mr Dr D1mr D2mr Dw D1mw D2mw
Event sort order: Ir I1mr I2mr Dr D1mr D2mr Dw D1mw D2mw
Thresholds:       99 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Include dirs:
User annotated:   valg_flo.c
Auto-annotation:  off

User-annotated source: valg_flo.c:


Ir I1mr I2mr Dr D1mr D2mr Dw D1mw D2mw

 .   .   .   .   .    .   .   .    .   #include<stdlib.h>
 .   .   .   .   .    .   .   .    .   int main()
 3   1   1   .   .    .   1   0    0   {
 .   .   .   .   .    .   .   .    .           float *p, *a;
 6   1   1   .   .    .   3   0    0           p = malloc(10*sizeof(float));
 6   0   0   .   .    .   3   0    0           a = malloc(10*sizeof(float));
 6   1   1   3   1    1   1   1    1           a[3] = p[3];
 4   0   0   1   0    0   1   0    0           free(a);
 4   0   0   1   0    0   1   0    0           free(p);
 2   0   0   2   0    0   .   .    .   }


6. Concluding Remarks

This document has gone through the basics of Valgrind. Once you understand the basic concept it is not difficult to make steps on your own.

If you have found any glaring typos, or outdated info in this document, please let us know.


7. References

  1. http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/docs/

  2. The most valuable source of information is the source code itself.


A. GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.1, March 2000

Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.


A.2. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS

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A.4. COPYING IN QUANTITY

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A.5. MODIFICATIONS

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