Re: Potential memory leak in sFlow API

Matt,

Thank you for pointing this out. I added a fix to version 6.2, which
is available for download now. The routines to remove or reset
samplers/pollers/agents and receivers were never tested properly so
please treat those parts with more than the usual level of suspicion.
For example, 6.2 also includes a fix to sfl_agent_resetReceiver().

Regards,
Neil McKee
InMon Corp.

On Oct 5, 2009, at 9:52 AM, Matt Woodley wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I recently came across a potential memory leak within the Agent code
> that
> can occur when an Agent sets a Poller or Sampler's receiver to Null.
>
> Within the Sflow Api, Pollers and Samplers are maintained as linked
> lists,
> with the head maintained at the Agent. The links are stored as
> pointers
> within the SFLPoller and SFLSampler structs respectively.
> This list is used for cleanup when "sfl_agent_release" is called.
> However,
> if during the lifetime of a Poller (or Sampler),
> "sfl_poller_set_sFlowCpReceiver" is invoked with a Null receiver, the
> behaviour is to memset the current Poller, which resets the "nxt"
> pointer
> which points to the next poller in the linked list, effectively
> truncating
> the list at the current Poller.
>
> Now, when "sfl_agent_release" is called, depending on the order of
> Pollers,
> and who's receivers were set to 0, anywhere from 1 to N Pollers will
> be
> freed. Leaving the rest as leaked memory, assuming the code using
> the API
> has dropped all references as well.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Matt
Received on Mon Oct 5 11:22:30 2009