[dpdk-dev] [dpdk-stable] [PATCH v2] app/procinfo: Fix memory leak by rte_service_init

[Van Haaren, Harry]

> From: Thomas Monjalon [mailto:thomas at monjalon.net]
> Sent: Friday, January 26, 2018 5:00 PM
> To: Varghese, Vipin <vipin.varghese at intel.com>; Van Haaren, Harry
> <harry.van.haaren at intel.com>
> Cc: stable at dpdk.org; dev at dpdk.org
> Subject: Re: [dpdk-stable] [PATCH v2] app/procinfo: Fix memory leak by
> rte_service_init
> 
> 11/01/2018 20:47, Vipin Varghese:
> > When procinfo is run multiple times against primary application, it
> > consumes huge page memory by rte_service_init. Which is not released
> > at exit of application.
> >
> > Invoking rte_service_finalize to real memory and prevent memory leak.
> 
> I don't think it is correct to call rte_service_finalize in applications,
> while rte_service_init is called in EAL.
> 
> Maybe we need a new function in EAL.

Yes correct - we need a rte_eal_deinit(), cleanup() or finalize() or something. This ties in with splitting EAL to be more modular on startup, and DPDK in general behaving more like a library and less like a single-monolith.

For the 18.02 timeframe, the simplest solution to solve the secondary process mem-leak issue than to merge into these applications, unfortunately. 

The only other option I see is to add an rte_eal_finalize() function, and hide this call behind it, however it is quite late to add such a function, and what do we do with cases like rte_panic(), rte_exit(), or system signals like SIGINT, SIGHUP etc? It seems too complicated to add "quickly" to me.

If there is technically a better solution viable in the given timeframe, I'm open to suggestions?