Finding memory leak in siteminder software running on hpux11i

[Shivkumar]

Dear Sirs,

We run siteminder software6.0 on hpux11i. Sometime, i observed the increase in process size of the siteminder process. I was thinking that it could be due to the memory leak. My one of the colleague said siteminder services takes up inreasing number of request through its threads that is why there is an increase in process size.

My earlier understanding was whether process or its threads are taking less or more number of requests; the increase in process size is the indication of memory leak.

I need IT gurus opinions.

Thanks,
Shiv

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Shiv:

Maybe yes, and maybe no.

If a program calls free() to free memoary it has allocated, that memory is only freed for the program's use. It is not until the program terminates that the memory allocated to and by it is returned to the system at large.

Regards!

...JRF...

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I am not familiar with this software but you would really need to contact the vendor to determine if this behavior is normal or not. The growth of a process's memory footprint is not a definitive test of a memory leak. It is quite common for an application to allocate dynamic memory to improve its internal caching effiency. Well written software will continue to allocate memory until a threshold is reached and then stabilize. Badly written software will grow without bounds or fail to free the memory when it is no longer needed.

Contact the vendor and describe the behavior you are seeing.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Shiv,

Usually just running a script to monitor memory size and submit it to the application vendor. There is nothing you can do to preven the software from having a memory leak. The only solution is to document it and firmly inform the vendor that you REQUIRE it be fixed in a reasonable period of time.

SEP

[Shivkumar]

What are the tools available to detect the memory leaks for applications on hpux platform ?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Glance or simply using ps and looking at the vsz value. In order to get the vsz value, you need to assert the XPG4 behavior of ps and that is done by setting the env var UNIX95.

e.g. UNIX95= ps -e -o vsz

You will certainly want more data displayed but all you need to do is a man ps for more details. The idea is that you examine the memory footprint over time and see if it grows.

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Shiv,

Does Siteminder uses Java any time ? If you want to Diagnose Memory Leaks in Java on HP-UX, follow this link,

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/java/infolibrary/prog_guide/diag_memory_leaks.html

-Arun

[Shivkumar]

could you please elaborate on "vsz" ?

[Shivkumar]

yes. siteminder uses java for console.

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Shiv,

"vsz" is virtual memory size.

-Arun

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Shiv,

You asked about,

What are the tools available to detect the memory leaks for applications on hpux platform ?

DMalloc is the tool used for detecting memory leaks and it is available from Porting center as well,

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Users/dmalloc-5.4.2/

-Arun

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Shiv,

http://h21007.www2.hp.com/dspp/ml/showArchiveMessage/1,,4!04!06!0057,00.html

HPUX-DEVTOOLS: Memory leak checking tools

-Arun

[Muthukumar_5]

For memory leak detection try to use glanceplus tool. It is good to report memory leak related.

Lots of more open source tools available as,

1) dmalloc
2) electricfence
3) memwatch

You can use gdb as well.

--
Muthu

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Shiv,

HP's WDB is based on GDB and provides HP-UX specific debugging options, you can download from,

http://h21007.www2.hp.com/dspp/tech/tech_TechSoftwareDetailPage_IDX/1,1703,2082,00.html

-Arun

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Shiv, You can download Electric Fence here,

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Development/Tools/ElectricF-2.05/

-Arun