Fix for memory leak in setenv/unsetenv (take 2)
Julian Elischer
julian at elischer.org
Fri Apr 20 01:06:36 UTC 2007
Sean C. Farley wrote:
> I have a new patch[1] that fixes memory leaks caused by repeated calls
> to setenv() with varying-sized values or unsetenv(). The web page has a
> better description about it.
>
I vaguely remember that several people have tried to fix this before,
but that fixing it actually breaks some ABI..
I may be wrong but maybe others remember better what the issue was.
I believe that the end result was that it was considered better to leak
memory than break the posix specified ABI in some way.
It's very vague in my memory though.
> I tested this with -STABLE with various applications. Also, to help
> check it further, I wrote a few regression tests for it.
>
> Notes/questions I have:
> 1. Would making it more IEEE Std 1003.1-compliant be desired?
> a. FreeBSD's setenv() allows an '=' in the name and value to comply
> with other standards while this standard disallows it.
> b. FreeBSD's unsetenv() does not have a return value while this
> standard returns an int. For the changes I made, this would be
> beneficial.
> 2. The "feature"--it is under the BUGS section :)--of keeping all
> pointers returned by previous calls to getenv() valid regardless of
> any calls to setenv() is still there. Keeping this requirement
> prevents a complete fix.
> 3. I previously thought about having the implementation initialize
> itself upon the library loading or called within crt1.c. The problem
> with a library-load time method is that changes made to the environ
> variable do not persist at the execution of main(). The issue with
> calling it within crt1.c is that FreeBSD's malloc() would need to
> call __findenv_environ() to find MALLOC_OPTIONS when it is
> initialized to prevent a recursion into each other. jasone@ helped
> me look at this.
> 4. Ignore dmalloc defines for now; they will be removed.
>
> Basically, the patch contains sysenv.c and a change to the Makefile to
> remove building of putenv.c and setenv.c. To increase the speed of
> putenv(), I have moved it into sysenv.c to make use of some internal
> (static) functions. I have just started with it, but I may leave it
> alone.
>
> Please let me know if you see any bugs.
>
> Sean
> 1. http://www.farley.org/freebsd/tmp/setenv-6/
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