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$Id: TODO,v 1.33 2001/07/12 23:12:13 gray Exp $
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HEAP OPERATIONS:
- realloc should look on either side (preferring above of course) for
free bblocks and absorb them
- find free section we can use
- remove from free list(s)
- rewrite admin chunks for used
- rewrite admin chunks for left-overs (if there are any)
- readd left-overs to free list (if there are any)
- when the last element in a dblock is freed, the block should be freed.
- presents problems with maintaining the dblock-admin slots
- probably requires a new pointer admin tree
- have the ability of limiting the size of the heap
- simulate heap boundary
- do number of bytes (maybe take k,K,m,M extensions)
- have start do number of bytes also?
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NEW HEAP ADMIN:
- need a list of block-ids:
- flag/size (bblock/free/dblock/external/unused)
- 1... = bblock # bytes allocated (max alloc = 2gb)
- 01... = free # bblocks till used block
- 00... = where ... > 1 = dblock # bits/# used
- external == 00...1 (all zeros then a 1)
- unused == 00...0 (all zeros)
- pointer: for info-block if used, next free if not
- next pointer for free-list (is this necessary?)
- pointer to [first] info block below
- need to search on pnt to find allocations: file, line, size
- key: pnt
- data:
- (char *)file/ret-addr (or next->)
- (short)line-number (0 if ret-addr)
- (short)size: # dblock-bytes/bblocks
- [pointer to bblock to go faster, ifdef]
- [iteration # when allocated]
- [iteration # when last touched]
- [time when allocated]
- [time when last touched]
- [memory crc to track changes, need ~MD5 (token?)]
- [some sort of use counter]
- idea is to keep the info struct
around even the section was freed.
That way we can track how many times a
pointer was returned
- time could be global or elapsed
- always save start-time and dump it on shutdown if LOG_STAMP
- ifdef the global or elapsed
- ifdef the last-touched information
- time info when LOG_STAMP
- iteration information need a token: LOG_ITERATION
- need to separate the allocations of the trees, different data sizes
- either ignore the external bblocks and the ones for the tree
allocations or account for them via careful recursion
- still need free lists of bblocks/dblocks
- maybe maintain the bblock free list (sorted by # blocks) in
a skip-list for easy location, or walk free-list
- with fence overruns, dump the pointer info on either side
- easy with allocation tree
- maybe have a #ifdef to define how many pnts on either side
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CHECKING:
- maybe have a type as the first argument to message
- can be error,trans,admin,debug,etc.
- this spits out a starting label to all messages:
trans: checking heap
admin: need 1 bblocks
- check in heap_check the cleared space above each allocation instead of
only the fence posts
- maybe add another debug level which stores crc information about internal
heap structures and verifies it during run time. slow, slow!!
- maybe add crc information about each memory block into the admin
structure and then be able to dump which blocks have changed
- maybe add 'use-mprotect' token to allow the user to access only
user-allocated pages
- a _big_ project could involve hacking gcc to allow some sort of heap
checking of every memory reference.
- watch for non-contiguous memory and mark those blocks as external
- have some sort of EXTERNAL flag
- make sure checked/freed/realloced/etc. pointers are not in that area
- we may need to round sbrk() calls if someone else did not do a
page-size call (see get_bblocks in chunk, need non-alloc flag)
- think of ways we can reorganize the heap and move allocations around
since problems sometimes pop-up with different heap organizations:
- pick a random slot from the free-list not just the first entry
- add new list of dblocks in reverse order to the free-lists or
randomly disperse
- maybe when allocating for a block of X bits, get 2 blocks or
some allocation factor
- maybe some sort of compact heap orientation like ndt organization.
- need a different dblock admin maintenance or
- need to allocate max dblock-admin for every block
- maybe generate some magical value which corresponds to the
orientation because you want to be able to reproduce
the error (bsd random?)
- probably need an internal randomizer with log-able seed
value and the ability to set the seed
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DOCUMENTATION:
- add more to the debugging section:
- use of MALLOC_START because a failure is found at some point
to find the last malloc call
- use of MALLOC_FUNC_CHECK by inserting dmalloc.h and FUNC_CHECK on
- need to make sure the manual works for the brand new user
- need an overview early on about its purpose (at a very high level)
- need a section to explain all the error codes
- put in a section about other malloc libraries and commercial versions
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TESTING / STATISTICS:
- maybe use the new gnu testing code (GCT)
- general tons of small blocks and watch for dblock_admin entry leak
like with large ndb_shell scripts
- maybe a program that would try a standard set of tests on a number of
different combinations of debug-values to look for dependencies.
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GENERAL:
- add display_pnt calls mostly everywhere display_where calls in chunk.
- maybe show the upper-end of a pointer if it is over fence post
- need to pass size into log_error_info
- maybe with no 'log-unknown' token, don't print ANY info about
non-file-line pnts
- maybe have some sort etext support for systems that don't have it?
- etext (heap-start?)
- end (heap-end?)
- maybe have some sort of memory-stack support:
- malloc_push_location("foo");
- malloc_pop_location("foo");
- have a maximum ~100 entry stack
- count how deep we are and if we go over don't store but track so
when we drop below 100 it will be correct info
- if we are at an unknown spot, display the top of the stack
- maybe some sort of cheap crc on memory in non-freed memory sections so
you can see what portions of memory changed (check tripwire)
- maybe provide support for reference counts on allocations:
- have a call which along with malloc/realloc, increments the
reference count of the node (maybe duplicate_pointer)
- free will decrement the reference count and free if 0
- have a call which reports on the reference count of the node
- may need additional admin space
- debug token?
- maybe have bit in allocation struct somewhere that it is a string and
maybe have a checking level/value that runs though the strings
and makes sure they have a NULL in them.
- token 'check-string' or something
- should only happen if alloc-blank used
- could be dangerous if folks are changing 'type' of allocation
from string to ...
- maybe some special strdup flag or something
- write perl script to summarize the memory usage per file.
- for fence underflow, print out the pointer below's info and for fence
overflow the pointer above's info
- handle memalign, valloc, maybe some form of mallopt
- maybe mallopt could be mapped into dmalloc_debug()
- maybe an environment variable to designate which program(s) you want to
debug. found with strstr.
- or could use .mallocrc entry
- could have program:tag entries for default behavior in program
- requires knowing the argv[0] argument
- add a recalloc function. I guess it is available under SGI.
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- should the free and alloc-blank tokens write the address % 256 into
bytes instead of a constant '\305'
- it would slow it down a bit
- maybe some token/option?
- \305 is recognizable however
- I've considered adding the mprotect features which would signal if
code READ into certain areas (writing is easy with magic values).
This causes problems since most (all?) mprotect implementations work
with page-size resolutions which means that every allocation (8 byte
string) would require 8+pagesize (often > 4096 bytes). Anyone have a
easier way of accomplishing this?
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I would like to blacklist a list of 'ra=0x4013195c'. I would be *very*
usefull to shut-up numerous leaks from standard C library. Is there a
way to do that ?
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but I'd like the extra feature of being able to SIGUSR1 a running
program and get a memory footprint during the main cycle (I'll add
this feature myself to dmalloc if I can get it working).
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It would be nice to have dmalloc_examine return good information from
random pointers:
- whether in heap or not
- in use or not
- free, realloc'd, calloc'd, etc.
- more than 1 file/line/ra for alloc, realloc, free locations
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