Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Memory Debugger
From: Paul Davis (pbd_AT_op.net)
Date: Thu May 23 2002 - 05:48:20 EEST
>
>I just recently had the need for a good malloc debugger. I tried about 3
>different solutions and didn't like the results I got with any of them.
>I eventually solved my problem with a gdb hardware memory watch. I wish
>I had thought of that first. efence seems like it might work for me, but
>it has problems with multiple threads or something, because I kept on
>getting a SIGILL signal (Illegal Instruction) within the efence code and
>could get no trace back in GDB. Its also horrendously slow. Perhaps I
>just didn't know what I was doing, if anyone has any tips for using
>efence or a better solution, please enlighten me :)
efence used to be thread-unsafe. newer versions (not sure which ones)
are now thread safe. this has changed within about the last 6 months,
i think.
i find dmalloc better than efence, though it has so many options that
it can be hard to know where to start sometimes. it will also be very
slow if you use the "kitchen-sink" settings, but for many things a
subset of the full set of checks will find problems quickly.
i find the x86 hardware watchpoint way, way, way too slow to be
useful, most of the time. on some hard problems in non-RT code, its
the only way. in RT code, its worse than useless :(
--p
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