Hello,

I am running RH6.0 + updates on an x86 machine.  This box is
networked and uses NIS to sync accounts across our network.

The problem arises when code like the following is run on a
RH6 machine with the default NIS installation:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <netdb.h>
int main() {
   while (1) {
      struct hostent* pHostEnt = NULL ;
      pHostEnt = gethostbyname("www.redhat.com");
   }
  return 0 ;
}

Note that using gethostbyname_r has the same problem (I did
a search on deja.com, and Theodore Tso mentioned that using
the standard gethostbyname is prone to memory leaks.)

Running this program and watching it in top will show that
the process will continually eat memory until it severely
bogs down the machine.  The problem is glibc-related, but it
is actaully triggered with RH's default NIS setup.  The
"hosts:" entry in /etc/nsswitch.conf has 'nisplus' listed
before 'dns' - I'm guessing the leak starts here, as
switching the order (ie, having 'dns' listed before
'nisplus' on a network setup that queries a valid DNS
server) will fix the problem.

--Ant