I'm trying to reproduce this bug in a rhel6.4 host, but can't get the memory leak issue.

$ rpm -q libvirt
libvirt-0.10.2-14.el6.x86_64

I start a session libvirtd and start/destroy 4 VMs in a loop, after running a whole night, the result is(same with initial status):

 PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                                                                                                                         
 2471 ydu       20   0 1003m  12m 4624 S  0.0  0.2  36:18.89 libvirtd

(In reply to comment #1)
> I'm trying to reproduce this bug in a rhel6.4 host, but can't get the memory
> leak issue.
> 
> $ rpm -q libvirt
> libvirt-0.10.2-14.el6.x86_64
> 
> I start a session libvirtd and start/destroy 4 VMs in a loop, after running
> a whole night, the result is(same with initial status):
> 
>  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND         
> 
>  2471 ydu       20   0 1003m  12m 4624 S  0.0  0.2  36:18.89 libvirtd

That is a RHEL6 test result, i will try it on rhel7 later.

On the rhel7 host
$ rpm -q libvirt
libvirt-1.0.1-1.el7.x86_64

PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                                                                                                                           
21812 ydu       20   0  920m  13m 6188 S   0.0  0.2   0:00.46 libvirtd  
------
  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND  
21812 ydu       20   0  920m  15m 6216 S   1.3  0.2   2:46.92 libvirtd  
------
  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
21812 ydu       20   0  920m  22m 6216 S   2.3  0.3  26:34.30 libvirtd

(In reply to comment #3)
> On the rhel7 host
> $ rpm -q libvirt
> libvirt-1.0.1-1.el7.x86_64
> 
> PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND         
> 
> 21812 ydu       20   0  920m  13m 6188 S   0.0  0.2   0:00.46 libvirtd  
> ------
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND  
> 21812 ydu       20   0  920m  15m 6216 S   1.3  0.2   2:46.92 libvirtd  
> ------
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> 21812 ydu       20   0  920m  22m 6216 S   2.3  0.3  26:34.30 libvirtd

Hi, Richard
  I can't reproduce this bug on the rehl7 host, is there any thing i can do to encounter it ? Please help, thanks!

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > On the rhel7 host
> > $ rpm -q libvirt
> > libvirt-1.0.1-1.el7.x86_64
> > 
> > PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND         
> > 
> > 21812 ydu       20   0  920m  13m 6188 S   0.0  0.2   0:00.46 libvirtd  
> > ------
> >   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND  
> > 21812 ydu       20   0  920m  15m 6216 S   1.3  0.2   2:46.92 libvirtd  
> > ------
> >   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> > 21812 ydu       20   0  920m  22m 6216 S   2.3  0.3  26:34.30 libvirtd
> 
> Hi, Richard
>   I can't reproduce this bug on the rehl7 host, is there any thing i can do
> to encounter it ? Please help, thanks!

The fact that it's growing (slightly) even in your test is interesting.

I am usually running the libguestfs test suite over and over again,
and that is likely what caused the memory leak.  However I do not
have any specific reproducer.

Just from the core dump file, it is hard to analyze the memory leak via gdb.
I am going to use vlgrind to examine memory leak next step.

It seems to be a leak in a very specific type of string
(SELinux contexts).  Have you looked at the code in libvirt
or dependent libs which could allocate this kind of string?

I have another libvirtd process (same machine) which could do
with going on a diet:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
17542 rjones    20   0 5983m 5.1g 4.1g S   0.0 33.1   5:21.45 libvirtd          

I'm going to assume this is the same problem.  The only thing
this machine has been doing involving libvirt AFAIK is running
the libguestfs test suite, so this's probably your reproducer:

cd libguestfs
make && make check

Created attachment 683423 [details]
make check log

I collected the statistics after running libguestfs test suit once on F18 as follows.  I am curious that the size of virtual images of libvirtd process didn't grow up after hitting the 1051m more or less. And I attached the "make check" log, seeing whether Richard could help review the log. In the meantime, the longevity testing is ongoing.

libguestfs is upstream git head.
libvirtd is libvirt-0.10.2.2-3

$ time make check > check.log 2>&1
real	19m23.452s
user	1m53.100s
sys	1m11.198s


  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                                                                                                                              
32273 gren      20   0 1051m  55m 9756 S   0.0  1.4   0:27.81 libvirtd

The 'make check' log looks fine from what I can tell.

It doesn't look as if you're hitting the bug at all.  On
my machine I see the 'RES' size MUCH larger than 55m.  For
example after freshly starting libvirtd:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
27566 rjones    20   0  702m  23m  16m S   0.0  0.1   0:00.31 libvirtd

Then after running the test suite once (libguestfs.git):

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
27566 rjones    20   0 2334m 1.3g 1.0g S   0.0  8.2   0:37.25 libvirtd

Let's assume this is not libvirt, but some dependent library.
What versions do you have of the following?

audit-libs-2.2.2-3.fc18.x86_64
avahi-libs-0.6.31-6.fc18.x86_64
cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.25-2.fc18.x86_64
dbus-libs-1.6.8-2.fc18.x86_64
device-mapper-libs-1.02.77-4.fc18.x86_64
glibc-2.16-28.fc18.x86_64
gnutls-2.12.22-1.fc18.x86_64
keyutils-libs-1.5.5-3.fc18.x86_64
krb5-libs-1.10.3-5.fc18.x86_64
libcap-ng-0.7.3-1.fc18.x86_64
libcom_err-1.42.5-1.fc18.x86_64
libcurl-7.27.0-5.fc18.x86_64
libgcc-4.7.2-8.fc18.x86_64
libgcrypt-1.5.0-8.fc18.x86_64
libgpg-error-1.10-3.fc18.x86_64
libidn-1.26-1.fc18.x86_64
libnl3-3.2.14-1.fc18.x86_64
libselinux-2.1.12-7.fc18.x86_64
libsepol-2.1.8-2.fc18.x86_64
libssh2-1.4.3-1.fc18.x86_64
libtasn1-2.14-1.fc18.x86_64
libvirt-client-0.10.2.2-3.fc18.x86_64
libwsman1-2.3.6-1.fc18.x86_64
libxml2-2.9.0-3.fc18.x86_64
nspr-4.9.4-1.fc18.x86_64
nss-3.14.1-3.fc18.x86_64
nss-softokn-freebl-3.14.1-5.fc18.x86_64
nss-util-3.14.1-2.fc18.x86_64
numactl-libs-2.0.7-7.fc18.x86_64
openldap-2.4.33-3.fc18.x86_64
openssl-libs-1.0.1c-7.fc18.x86_64
p11-kit-0.14-1.fc18.x86_64
pcre-8.31-4.fc18.x86_64
systemd-libs-197-1.fc18.1.x86_64
xz-libs-5.1.2-2alpha.fc18.x86_64
yajl-2.0.4-1.fc18.x86_64
zlib-1.2.7-9.fc18.x86_64

(The output of:
  ldd /usr/sbin/libvirtd | grep '=>' | awk '{print $3}' | \
  xargs -n 1 rpm -qf | sort -u
)

$ diff myrpm yourrpm

1c1
< audit-libs-2.2.2-2.fc18.x86_64
---
> audit-libs-2.2.2-3.fc18.x86_64
3c3
< cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.23-36.fc18.x86_64
---
> cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.25-2.fc18.x86_64
7c7
< gnutls-2.12.21-1.fc18.x86_64
---
> gnutls-2.12.22-1.fc18.x86_64
12c12
< libcurl-7.27.0-4.fc18.x86_64
---
> libcurl-7.27.0-5.fc18.x86_64
16c16
< libidn-1.25-3.fc18.x86_64
---
> libidn-1.26-1.fc18.x86_64
33,34c33,34
< pcre-8.31-3.fc18.x86_64
< systemd-libs-195-15.fc18.x86_64
---
> pcre-8.31-4.fc18.x86_64
> systemd-libs-197-1.fc18.1.x86_64

Let me upgrade version of these rpms, then try "make check" again.
BTW, the longevity testing(24h) was fine:

32273 gren      20   0 1059m  99m 8804 S   0.0  2.6  40:37.10 libvirtd

Unfortunately, the memory leak issue still couldn't be able to be reproduced on my testing machine even after upgrading these libraries which libvirtd loads.

I used both libguestfs.git and libguestfs-1.21.3 in orders.
One thing I need to mention, I disable compliling for object with --disable-gobject

./autogen.sh \
--prefix=/usr \
--with-default-attach-method=libvirt \
--enable-gcc-warnings \
--enable-gtk-doc \
--disable-gobject \
-C

gobject shouldn't be involved at all.

I wonder if this is a kernel issue?  Or a configuration issue?

Because I haven't rebooted for a while my running kernel is:

Linux choo.home.annexia.org 3.6.9-4.fc18.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Dec 4 14:12:51 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I have no ~/.cache/libvirt/libvirtd.conf file at all, and my
/etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf file is not changed.

Prelink says ...

prelink: /usr/sbin/libvirtd: at least one of file's dependencies has changed since prelinking
S.?......    /usr/sbin/libvirtd

whatever that is supposed to mean.

31360 rjones    20   0 25.2g  24g  19g S   0.0 159.0 100:07.64 libvirtd

This was caused by just running the following script overnight:

#!/bin/bash -

set -e
#set -x

cd /tmp
rm -f test1.img

while true; do
echo -n .

output=$(
guestfish <<EOF
sparse test1.img 1G
run
mkfs ext2 /dev/sda
vfs-type /dev/sda
EOF
)

if [ "$output" != "ext2" ]; then
    echo "error: output is not 'ext2'"
    echo "$output"
    exit 1
fi

done

gren: Is your SELinux Enforcing?  Mine is.

(In reply to comment #15)
> gren: Is your SELinux Enforcing?  Mine is.

Yes, I ran "make check" with selinux enforcing for sure, as I saw your suspicion on selinux before.

Okay, let me try the shell script.

Rebooting did NOT fix this issue.  After a fresh boot
libvirtd is still leaking memory like crazy.

 5526 rjones    20   0 2648m 1.4g 1.1g S   0.0  9.0   0:41.74 libvirtd

Rich, there's a fix for a leak that was discovered by coverity that is on list if not committed upstream; can you confirm that the leak is still there with the git HEAD?

John, since you're deep in the weeds with the coverity reported stuff, can you work with Rich on this?

Sorry chaps, it DOES occur with libvirt.git, although qualitatively
I suspect the leak may be different(!)  It certainly leaks a little
bit less than before, but libvirtd is still growing substantially
after a single run of the test suite:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
31717 rjones    20   0 2522m 1.4g 1.1g S   0.0  9.0   0:09.49 lt-libvirtd       

---

John, here is a link to some documentation about how to run the
libguestfs test suite:

http://oirase.annexia.org/running-libguestfs-test-suite.txt

Created attachment 685857 [details]
excerpt from valgrind.log

I just ran a single run of libguestfs-test-tool against
libvirtd from git and I can see loads of memory leaks, some
in obvious SELinux-related code.

Maybe checking /proc/$(libvirtd-PID)/maps is a way of looking in the memory areas of a libvirtd process.

Methodology:

I'm testing libvirt.git (at time of writing,
commit bf62e9953c3dde35551a0c2a91d30a294516609a).

I have applied my patch to libselinux to fix bug 903203.

I use the following command (from the libvirt.git directory)
to run libvirtd under valgrind:

killall lt-libvirtd libvirtd
./run valgrind \
  --trace-children=no \
  --child-silent-after-fork=yes \
  --log-file=/tmp/valgrind.log \
  --leak-check=full \
  --suppressions=./tests/.valgrind.supp \
  ./daemon/libvirtd --timeout 30

while at the same time running the following command from
the libguestfs.git directory:

while true; do echo -n .; ../libvirt/run ./run ./fish/guestfish -N fs exit; done

This creates lots of transient domains, serially.  After some
time I ^C the while loop and wait 30s for libvirtd to exit, then I
examine the /tmp/valgrind.log file.

I also did the same but without using valgrind on libvirtd.

Observations:

The libvirtd process still grows unbounded (without valgrind).

Valgrind shows some reachable blocks, but no significant
unreachable blocks, indicating there is no memory leak.

Examining /proc/$pid/maps shows that the number of memory mappings
is growing like crazy:

$ wc -l /proc/589/maps 
822 /proc/589/maps
$ wc -l /proc/589/maps 
837 /proc/589/maps
$ wc -l /proc/589/maps 
852 /proc/589/maps
$ wc -l /proc/589/maps 
867 /proc/589/maps
$ wc -l /proc/589/maps 
942 /proc/589/maps
$ wc -l /proc/589/maps 
1032 /proc/589/maps

Examination of /proc/$pid/maps appears to point to libselinux again:

$ awk '{print $6}' /proc/589/maps | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head
    340 /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.local.bin
    340 /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.homedirs.bin
    340 /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.bin
     67 
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libsasldb.so.2.0.25
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libplain.so.2.0.25
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/liblogin.so.2.0.25
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libgssapiv2.so.2.0.25
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libdigestmd5.so.2.0.25
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libcrammd5.so.2.0.25

I've now fixed all of the memory leaks, so that I can run
the whole libguestfs test suite without any noticable
growth in the size of libvirtd.

There is one patch waiting to go upstream in libvirt:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2013-January/msg01730.html

There is one patch upstream in libvirt which probably
needs to be backported to F18:
http://libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt.git;a=commitdiff;h=05cc03518987fa0f8399930d14c1d635591ca49b

There are two bugs that need to be fixed in libselinux:
bug 903203, bug 903280.

I checked the libselinux-2.1.12-7 source code, it tries to mmap three binary file

/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.bin
/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.homedirs.bin
/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.bin

But I don't find a place where it munmaps them, so probably it is mmap leak.

There are no these .bin files on my testing machine, possibly it is the reason why I can not reproduce the issue.

Afer recompiling the selinux-policy-targeted, it generated .bin files.
and on my testing machine, it can reproduce the bug too :).

I'll put this bug in POST so Cole knows that we need
the patches in Fedora 18 and RHEL 7.

http://libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt.git;a=commitdiff;h=05cc03518987fa0f8399930d14c1d635591ca49b
http://libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt.git;a=commitdiff;h=6159710ca1eecefa7c81335612c8141c88fc35a9

Thanks guannan's help, now i can reproduce this bug on RHEL7
# uname -r
3.7.0-0.31.el7.x86_64
# rpm -q libvirt
libvirt-1.0.1-1.el7.x86_64

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                                                                  
15057 root      20   0 2695284 1.868g 1.518g S 2.659 24.96   0:15.48 libvirtd

(In reply to comment #28)
> Thanks guannan's help, now i can reproduce this bug on RHEL7
> # uname -r
> 3.7.0-0.31.el7.x86_64
> # rpm -q libvirt
> libvirt-1.0.1-1.el7.x86_64
> 
>   PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
> 
> 15057 root      20   0 2695284 1.868g 1.518g S 2.659 24.96   0:15.48 libvirtd

Also look at /proc/15057/maps.  Does it map the same
/etc/selinux/... files over and over again? (see also comment 23)

(In reply to comment #29)
> (In reply to comment #28)
> > Thanks guannan's help, now i can reproduce this bug on RHEL7
> > # uname -r
> > 3.7.0-0.31.el7.x86_64
> > # rpm -q libvirt
> > libvirt-1.0.1-1.el7.x86_64
> > 
> >   PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
> > 
> > 15057 root      20   0 2695284 1.868g 1.518g S 2.659 24.96   0:15.48 libvirtd
> 
> Also look at /proc/15057/maps.  Does it map the same
> /etc/selinux/... files over and over again? (see also comment 23)

Yes, it is.

Hi yanbing

We need to verify the bug is fixed already in RHEL7 rather than just being able to reproduce it. So probably we need to wait some time for the libselinux with fix on RHEL7.
I just saw no such release for RHEL. 
For fedora, libselinux-2.1.12-7.1.fc18 with the fix is released already.
the http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=380977

(In reply to comment #31)
> Hi yanbing
> 
> We need to verify the bug is fixed already in RHEL7 rather than just being
> able to reproduce it. So probably we need to wait some time for the
> libselinux with fix on RHEL7.
> I just saw no such release for RHEL.

Yes, and both bug 903203 and bug 903280 for fedora 18, so should we clone a new one to against rhel7 and backport these fixed patches ?

> For fedora, libselinux-2.1.12-7.1.fc18 with the fix is released already.
> the http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=380977

Test with libvirt-1.0.5-2.el7.x86_64, and can't reproduce this bug.
# ps axu|grep libvirtd
root     21581  0.0  0.0 1072100 21280 ?       Ssl  Jun03   0:01 /usr/sbin/libvirtd

# wc -l /proc/21581/maps 
443 /proc/21581/maps
# wc -l /proc/21581/maps 
443 /proc/21581/maps

# awk '{print $6}' /proc/21581/maps | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head
     65 
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libsasldb.so.3.0.0
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libplain.so.3.0.0
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/liblogin.so.3.0.0
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libdigestmd5.so.3.0.0
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libcrammd5.so.3.0.0
      4 /usr/lib64/sasl2/libanonymous.so.3.0.0
      4 /usr/lib64/pkcs11/p11-kit-trust.so
      4 /usr/lib64/pkcs11/gnome-keyring-pkcs11.so
      4 /usr/lib64/libz.so.1.2.7
# ll /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/*.bin
-rw-------. 1 root root 1171276 May 21 13:08 /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.bin
-rw-------. 1 root root   36550 May 21 13:08 /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.homedirs.bin
-rw-------. 1 root root      16 May 21 13:08 /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.local.bin


  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                                           
21581 root      20   0 1072100  22128  10656 S 41.81 0.017   0:25.56 libvirtd 

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                                                                  
21581 root      20   0 1072100  21744  10656 S 42.48 0.017   0:31.97 libvirtd  

And talk with gren, the bug can be VERIFIED.

This request was resolved in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0.

Contact your manager or support representative in case you have further questions about the request.