Question

Is there a memory leak here?

class myclass : public boost::enable_shared_from_this<myclass>{
//...
    void broadcast(const char *buf){
    broadcast(new std::string(buf));
    }

    void broadcast(std::string *buf){
    boost::shared_ptr<std::string> msg(buf);
    }
//...
};  

(This is the stripped down version that still shows the problem – normally I do real work in that second broadcast call!)
My assumption was that the first call gets some memory, then because I do nothing with the smart pointer the second call would immediately delete it. Simple? But, when I run my program, the memory increases over time, in jumps. Yet when I comment out the only call in the program to broadcast(), it does not!

The ps output for the version without broadcast():

 %CPU  %MEM     VSZ    RSS  TIME
 3.2   0.0     158068  1988 0:00 
 3.3   0.0     158068  1988 0:25  (12 mins later)

With the call to broadcast() (on Ubuntu 10.04, g++ 4.4, boost 1.40)

 %CPU  %MEM     VSZ    RSS  TIME
 1.0    0.0    158068  1980 0:00
 3.3    0.0    158068  1988 0:04  (2 mins)
 3.4    0.0    223604  1996 0:06  (3.5 mins)
 3.3    0.0    223604  2000 0:09
 3.1    0.0    223604  2000 2:21  (82 mins)
 3.1    0.0    223604  2000 3:50  (120 mins)

(Seeing that jump at around 3 minutes is reproducible in the few times I’ve tried so far.)

With the call to broadcast() (on Centos 5.6, g++ 4.1, boost 1.41)

 %CPU  %MEM     VSZ    RSS  TIME
 0.0    0.0     51224  1744 0:00
 0.0    0.0     51224  1744 0:00  (30s)
 1.1    0.0    182296  1776 0:02  (3.5 mins)
 0.7    0.0    182296  1776 0:03
 0.7    0.0    182296  1776 0:09  (20 mins)
 0.7    0.0    247832  1788 0:14  (34 mins)
 0.7    0.0    247832  1788 0:17
 0.7    0.0    247832  1788 0:24  (55 mins)
 0.7    0.0    247832  1788 0:36  (71 mins)

Here is how broadcast() is being called (from a boost::asio timer) and now I’m wondering if it could matter:

void callback(){
//...
timer.expires_from_now(boost::posix_time::milliseconds(20));
//...
char buf[512];
sprintf(buf,"...");
broadcast(buf);
timer.async_wait(boost::bind(&myclass::callback, shared_from_this() ));
//...
}

(callback is in the same class as the broadcast function)

I have 4 of these timers going, and my io_service.run() is being called by a pool of 3 threads. My 20ms time-out means each timer calls broadcast() 50 times/second. I set the expiry at the start of my function, and run the timer near the end. The elided code is not doing that much; outputting debug info to std::cout is perhaps the most CPU-intensive job. I suppose it may be possible the timer triggers immediately sometimes; but, still, I cannot see how that would be a problem, let alone cause a memory leak.

(The program runs fine, by the way, even when doing its full tasks; I only got suspicious when I noticed the memory usage reported by ps had jumped up.)

UPDATE: Thanks for the answers and comments. I can add that I left the program running on each system for another couple of hours and memory usage did not increase any further. (I was also ready to dismiss this as a one-off heap restructuring or something, when the Centos version jumped for a second time.) Anyway, it is good to know that my understanding of smart pointers is still sound, and that there is no weird corner case with threading that I need to be concerned about.

Answer 1

If there is a leak, you allocate a std::string (20 bytes, more or less) 50 times per second.
in 1 hour you should have been allocated … 3600*50*20 = 3,4MBytes.

Nothing to do with th 64K you see, that’s probably due to the way the system allocate the memory to the process, that new sub-allocates to the variables.

The system, when something is deleted, needs to “garbage collect it” placing it back into the available memory chain for further allocations.
But since this takes time, most of the systems don’t do this operation until the released memory goes over certain amounts, so that a “repack” can be done.