Memory leak in libpcap (top of tree) and/or kernel

["Gianluca Varenni" <gianluca.varenni () cacetech com>]

Hi all.

I just discovered an interesting leak with the libpcap 1.0 or the current 
top-of-tree.

On Fedora 10, kernel 2.6.27.5 or 2.6.27.12, there is a memory leak by which 
a simple program like this one will eventually use all the memory on the 
system (as reported by top) and eventually the application gets killed by 
the OS (and as a side effect the graphical system gets killed too and 
restarts). This happens only if the usbmon devices are listed (I tried on a 
VM disabling and enabling the virtual USB controller. No VM tools are 
installed on the guest, we are able to replicate it on a physical machine).

The interesting part is that in top the memory usage of the process is 
always < 1%, but the total amount of free memory on the system goes down to 
few megabytes, until the OS finally kills the process.

Here is the small test application.

int main()
{
   pcap_if_t *ifs;
   char errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE];

   do
   {
       if (pcap_findalldevs(&ifs, errbuf) != 0)
       {
           printf("error");
           break;
       }

       pcap_freealldevs(ifs);
   }
   while(1==1);

   return 1;
}

Has anyone experienced that?

Have a nice day
GV 

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