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Bug 1937420

Summary: [ESXi][RHEL7.9] Memory leak in vmtoolsd when disable-query-diskinfo is set to false [rhel-7.9.z]
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Reporter: Frank DeLorey <fdelorey>
Component: open-vm-toolsAssignee: Cathy Avery <cavery>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: ldu <ldu>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 7.9CC: cavery, cww, jen, jjarvis, jortialc, jreznik, jsavanyo, ldu, leiwang, mrezanin, nuno.santos, ravindrakumar, ribarry, xialiu, yacao, ymankad
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: Triaged, ZStream
Target Release: ---Flags: pm-rhel: mirror+
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: open-vm-tools-11.0.5-3.el7_9.3 Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2021-04-27 11:35:07 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Frank DeLorey 2021-03-10 15:58:13 UTC 
Description of problem:

Customer upgrade RHEl from 7.8 to 7.9 and installed the latest open-vm-tools version: open-vm-tools-11.0.5-3.el7_9.1.x86_64
They noticed a memory leak when querying disk info is enabled.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

open-vm-tools-11.0.5-3.el7_9.1.x86_64

How reproducible:


Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start a vm running RHEL7.9 with open-vm-tools-11.0.5-3.el7_9.1.x86_64
2.Set disable-query-diskinfo=false in the tools.conf file

Actual results:
The memory leak is seen right away

Expected results:
We should not be leaking memory.

Additional info:

Customer believes this is fixed up stream via this commit: https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools/commit/25c2e973583cf189995c9638701e4bef9e1c851c


Testing from the customer:

I make a copy of the tools.conf.example to tools.conf and then make edits with the following resulting configuration:

[root@tumble vmware-tools]# diff tools.conf.example tools.conf
181c181
< #disable-query-diskinfo=false
---
> disable-query-diskinfo=false
184c184
< #poll-interval=30
---
> poll-interval=5

The following happens after poweroff/poweron of the VM:

[root@tumble vmware-tools]# while true; do ps -eo rss,vsz,pid,args |grep vmtoolsd$; sleep 5 ; done
 5016 275360   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5028 275360   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5040 275360   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5064 275360   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5080 275360   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5096 275428   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5112 275428   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5144 275496   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5152 275496   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5172 275496   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5200 275496   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5244 275576   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5248 275576   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5260 275576   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5272 275576   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5308 275648   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5316 275648   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5328 275648   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5344 275648   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5388 275648   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5392 275648   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5404 275728   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5408 275728   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5448 275728   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5472 275728   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5476 275728   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5500 275840   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5512 275840   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5520 275840   720 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd

So the leak is quite visible. The problem does not occur when the tools.conf file looks like this:

[root@tumble vmware-tools]# diff tools.conf.example tools.conf
181c181
< #disable-query-diskinfo=false
---
> disable-query-diskinfo=true
184c184
< #poll-interval=30
---
> poll-interval=5

In such case I see this:

[root@tumble ~]# while true; do ps -eo rss,vsz,pid,args |grep vmtoolsd$; sleep 5 ; done
 4624 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4628 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4628 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 4676 275052   723 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd

So the leak appears to be in the code for disable-query-diskinfo .
Comment 2 Cathy Avery 2021-03-10 18:59:51 UTC 
Hi Lili,

Can you try to reproduce this? Then see if this build fixes it?

https://brewweb.engineering.redhat.com/brew/taskinfo?taskID=35367425

Thanks!
Comment 3 ldu 2021-03-11 03:14:01 UTC 
(In reply to Cathy Avery from comment #2)
> Hi Lili,
> 
> Can you try to reproduce this? Then see if this build fixes it?
> 
> https://brewweb.engineering.redhat.com/brew/taskinfo?taskID=35367425
> 
> Thanks!

Hi Cathy,
Follow Frank's reproduce step, this issue could be reproduce. retest with your test build could fix this issue.
Reproduce steps:
1 install rhel7.9 and add a sata disk to OS
2 copy a tool.conf file under /etc/vmware-tools/, uncomment the disable-query-diskinfo=false
3 shutdown -P now the guest, then power on the guest
4 Format the new add sata disk in step 1 and mount it under /mnt
5 run command #while true; do ps -eo rss,vsz,pid,args |grep vmtoolsd$; sleep 5 ; done
6 check the status

[root@vm-197-13 ~]# while true; do ps -eo rss,vsz,pid,args |grep vmtoolsd$; sleep 5 ; done
 4804 289252  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5124 289252  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5128 289252  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5132 289252  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5184 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5188 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5196 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5212 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5216 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5232 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5240 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5244 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5248 289320  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5264 289396  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5264 289396  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5268 289396  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5280 289396  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5300 289396  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5312 289396  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5316 289396  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5316 289396  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5324 289396  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5332 289504  3155 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd

Then install the test build open-vm-tools-11.0.5-3.el7.2.cavery202103101327.x86_64.rpm in guest, start the vmtoolsd service.
rerun command #while true; do ps -eo rss,vsz,pid,args |grep vmtoolsd$; sleep 5 ; done
[root@vm-197-13 ~]# while true; do ps -eo rss,vsz,pid,args |grep vmtoolsd$; sleep 5 ; done
 5120 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5132 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5136 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
 5180 223716 20144 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
Comment 15 errata-xmlrpc 2021-04-27 11:35:07 UTC 
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory (open-vm-tools bug fix and enhancement update), and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2021:1393