On Sat, 23 Jun 2012, Chet Ramey wrote: > On 6/20/12 2:50 PM, Serge van den Boom wrote: > > Bash Version: 4.2 > > Patch Level: 29 > > Release Status: release > > > > Description: > > If you interrupt the evaluation of **/ wildcard expansion, the file > > descriptors which were opened will not be closed. > > Also, memory used will not be released. > > I can't reproduce this: > [...] > > Bash consuming memory is not evidence of a memory leak. The bash malloc > only returns memory to the kernel under certain circumstances; it usually > acts as a cache between the application (bash) and the kernel. You need > to run this using a leak-checking tool like valgrind to determine whether > bash has allocated memory to which it no longer retains a handle.
It may be superfluous now, after Andreas' response, but here is some additional information. If you leave the wildcard expansion running for longer, the effect is greater, and out-of-memory errors will be shown when executing a command afterwards: $ echo $BASH_VERSION 4.2.29(1)-release $ echo $$ 16346 $ ls /**/*.txt [after 15 minutes] ^C $ ls bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory [... about 300 more of these ...] bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory bash: cannot make pipe for command substitution: Too many open files [ In a different shell instance (one which is still usable): ] $ ls -fl /proc/16346/fd total 0K dr-x------ 2 svdb users 0 Jun 23 22:44 ./ dr-x------ 6 svdb users 0 Jun 23 22:44 ../ lrwx------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 0 -> /dev/pts/1 lrwx------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 1 -> /dev/pts/1 lrwx------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 2 -> /dev/pts/1 l-wx------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 3 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/.fluxbox/log lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 4 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 5 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 6 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 7 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 8 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 9 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 10 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 11 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 12 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 13 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 14 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 15 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 16 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 17 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 18 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 19 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 20 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 21 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 22 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 23 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 24 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 25 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 26 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 27 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 28 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 29 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 30 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 31 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 32 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 33 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 34 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 35 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 36 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 37 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 38 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 39 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 40 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 41 -> /dev/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 42 -> /proc/16346/fd/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 43 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 44 -> /mnt/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 45 -> /mnt/hda7/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 46 -> /mnt/hda7/home/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 47 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 48 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/c/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 49 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/c/tests/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 50 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/c/tests/tar/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 51 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/c/tests/tar/work/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 52 -> // lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 53 -> /mnt/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 54 -> /mnt/hda7/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 55 -> /mnt/hda7/home/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 56 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 57 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/c/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 58 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/c/cheater/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 59 -> /mnt/hda7/home/svdb/c/cheater/arch/ lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 60 -> pipe:[1031416] l-wx------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 61 -> pipe:[1031416] lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 62 -> pipe:[1031417] l-wx------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 63 -> pipe:[1031417] lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 64 -> pipe:[1031418] l-wx------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 65 -> pipe:[1031418] [...] lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 1019 -> pipe:[1031895] l-wx------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 1020 -> pipe:[1031895] lr-x------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 1021 -> pipe:[1031896] l-wx------ 1 svdb users 64 Jun 23 23:06 1022 -> pipe:[1031896] The file descriptors up to 59 were there after the path name expansion was interrupted, but I now see that the file descriptors for the pipes only appeared after I executed 'ls', which might suggest that there is a second issue. $ htop [...] PID PPID USER PRI NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU CPU% MEM% TIME+ Command 16346 16345 svdb 20 0 422M 417M 1488 S 2 0.0 13.8 2:19.19 bash [...] Note the 'VIRT' and 'RES' columns. For a fresh bash, htop shows something like this: [...] PID PPID USER PRI NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU CPU% MEM% TIME+ Command 17484 17483 svdb 20 0 5404 1736 1312 S 2 0.0 0.1 0:00.02 bash [...] Btw, I should add that I compiled with --without-bash-malloc, following the instructions from http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/chapter05/bash.html . I mistakenly thought that my options to 'configure' were included in the bashbug output. My full 'configure' command line was: ./configure --prefix=/opt/bash-4.2 --disable-rpath --with-installed-readline=/opt/readline --with-curses --without-bash-malloc And my readline is version 6.2, with both available patches applied. Regards, Serge
