Memory leak in net80211 on FBSD 6.0

Nate Nielsen nielsen-list at memberwebs.com
Thu Dec 1 21:04:06 GMT 2005


Sam Leffler wrote:
> I believe the attached change plugs the leak.  

I gave it a shot, and the problem is still there. I've checked to make
sure this is in fact the right kernel:

> # strings /boot/kernel/kernel | grep ieee80211_init_neighbor
> ieee80211_init_neighbor

Is there further information you'd like me to get together?

It appears (as I'm sure you're aware) that the number of allocations in
the '80211node' malloc pool is directly related to the number of packets
received over the wireless link. The memory is not 'leaked' per se. If I
 shutdown the system before the panic then the memory is freed (I put a
few debug messages).

The memory leak only occurs on one station of a adhoc pair. If I
shutdown both systems, then it's a guess as to which one will be
affected. However once one of them panics, then that machine will
continue to be the affected machine (after reboots).

> Note that there are
> several issues with adhoc mode and ath devices so please try to separate
> the leak from any other complaints.  

I'll keep that in mind. However in this case the other trouble I've had
 is with rate control using an insane amount of CPU. I can imagine that
if thousands of seperate ieee80211_node's are allocated, then trying to
do rate control on all of these would result in the condition I'm
seeing. It seems the two problems could be related.

Cheers,
Nate



More information about the freebsd-net mailing list