## 3. OLDER NEWS

Release 3.3.1 (4 June 2008)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.3.1 fixes a bunch of bugs in 3.3.0, adds support for glibc-2.8 based
systems (openSUSE 11, Fedora Core 9), improves the existing glibc-2.7
support, and adds support for the SSSE3 (Core 2) instruction set.
3.3.1 will likely be the last release that supports some very old
systems. In particular, the next major release, 3.4.0, will drop
support for the old LinuxThreads threading library, and for gcc
versions prior to 3.0.
The fixed bugs are as follows. Note that "n-i-bz" stands for "not in
bugzilla" -- that is, a bug that was reported to us but never got a
bugzilla entry. We encourage you to file bugs in bugzilla
(http://bugs.kde.org/enter_valgrind_bug.cgi) rather than mailing the
developers (or mailing lists) directly -- bugs that are not entered
into bugzilla tend to get forgotten about or ignored.
n-i-bz Massif segfaults at exit
n-i-bz Memcheck asserts on Altivec code
n-i-bz fix sizeof bug in Helgrind
n-i-bz check fd on sys_llseek
n-i-bz update syscall lists to kernel 2.6.23.1
n-i-bz support sys_sync_file_range
n-i-bz handle sys_sysinfo, sys_getresuid, sys_getresgid on ppc64-linux
n-i-bz intercept memcpy in 64-bit ld.so's
n-i-bz Fix wrappers for sys_{futimesat,utimensat}
n-i-bz Minor false-error avoidance fixes for Memcheck
n-i-bz libmpiwrap.c: add a wrapper for MPI_Waitany
n-i-bz helgrind support for glibc-2.8
n-i-bz partial fix for mc_leakcheck.c:698 assert:
'lc_shadows[i]->data + lc_shadows[i] ...
n-i-bz Massif/Cachegrind output corruption when programs fork
n-i-bz register allocator fix: handle spill stores correctly
n-i-bz add support for PA6T PowerPC CPUs
126389 vex x86->IR: 0xF 0xAE (FXRSTOR)
158525 ==126389
152818 vex x86->IR: 0xF3 0xAC (repz lodsb)
153196 vex x86->IR: 0xF2 0xA6 (repnz cmpsb)
155011 vex x86->IR: 0xCF (iret)
155091 Warning [...] unhandled DW_OP_ opcode 0x23
156960 ==155901
155528 support Core2/SSSE3 insns on x86/amd64
155929 ms_print fails on massif outputs containing long lines
157665 valgrind fails on shmdt(0) after shmat to 0
157748 support x86 PUSHFW/POPFW
158212 helgrind: handle pthread_rwlock_try{rd,wr}lock.
158425 sys_poll incorrectly emulated when RES==0
158744 vex amd64->IR: 0xF0 0x41 0xF 0xC0 (xaddb)
160907 Support for a couple of recent Linux syscalls
161285 Patch -- support for eventfd() syscall
161378 illegal opcode in debug libm (FUCOMPP)
160136 ==161378
161487 number of suppressions files is limited to 10
162386 ms_print typo in milliseconds time unit for massif
161036 exp-drd: client allocated memory was never freed
162663 signalfd_wrapper fails on 64bit linux
(3.3.1.RC1: 2 June 2008, vex r1854, valgrind r8169).
(3.3.1: 4 June 2008, vex r1854, valgrind r8180).
Release 3.3.0 (7 December 2007)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.3.0 is a feature release with many significant improvements and the
usual collection of bug fixes. This release supports X86/Linux,
AMD64/Linux, PPC32/Linux and PPC64/Linux. Support for recent distros
(using gcc 4.3, glibc 2.6 and 2.7) has been added.
The main excitement in 3.3.0 is new and improved tools. Helgrind
works again, Massif has been completely overhauled and much improved,
Cachegrind now does branch-misprediction profiling, and a new category
of experimental tools has been created, containing two new tools:
Omega and DRD. There are many other smaller improvements. In detail:
- Helgrind has been completely overhauled and works for the first time
since Valgrind 2.2.0. Supported functionality is: detection of
misuses of the POSIX PThreads API, detection of potential deadlocks
resulting from cyclic lock dependencies, and detection of data
races. Compared to the 2.2.0 Helgrind, the race detection algorithm
has some significant improvements aimed at reducing the false error
rate. Handling of various kinds of corner cases has been improved.
Efforts have been made to make the error messages easier to
understand. Extensive documentation is provided.
- Massif has been completely overhauled. Instead of measuring
space-time usage -- which wasn't always useful and many people found
confusing -- it now measures space usage at various points in the
execution, including the point of peak memory allocation. Its
output format has also changed: instead of producing PostScript
graphs and HTML text, it produces a single text output (via the new
'ms_print' script) that contains both a graph and the old textual
information, but in a more compact and readable form. Finally, the
new version should be more reliable than the old one, as it has been
tested more thoroughly.
- Cachegrind has been extended to do branch-misprediction profiling.
Both conditional and indirect branches are profiled. The default
behaviour of Cachegrind is unchanged. To use the new functionality,
give the option --branch-sim=yes.
- A new category of "experimental tools" has been created. Such tools
may not work as well as the standard tools, but are included because
some people will find them useful, and because exposure to a wider
user group provides tool authors with more end-user feedback. These
tools have a "exp-" prefix attached to their names to indicate their
experimental nature. Currently there are two experimental tools:
* exp-Omega: an instantaneous leak detector. See
exp-omega/docs/omega_introduction.txt.
* exp-DRD: a data race detector based on the happens-before
relation. See exp-drd/docs/README.txt.
- Scalability improvements for very large programs, particularly those
which have a million or more malloc'd blocks in use at once. These
improvements mostly affect Memcheck. Memcheck is also up to 10%
faster for all programs, with x86-linux seeing the largest
improvement.
- Works well on the latest Linux distros. Has been tested on Fedora
Core 8 (x86, amd64, ppc32, ppc64) and openSUSE 10.3. glibc 2.6 and
2.7 are supported. gcc-4.3 (in its current pre-release state) is
supported. At the same time, 3.3.0 retains support for older
distros.
- The documentation has been modestly reorganised with the aim of
making it easier to find information on common-usage scenarios.
Some advanced material has been moved into a new chapter in the main
manual, so as to unclutter the main flow, and other tidying up has
been done.
- There is experimental support for AIX 5.3, both 32-bit and 64-bit
processes. You need to be running a 64-bit kernel to use Valgrind
on a 64-bit executable.
- There have been some changes to command line options, which may
affect you:
* --log-file-exactly and
--log-file-qualifier options have been removed.
To make up for this --log-file option has been made more powerful.
It now accepts a %p format specifier, which is replaced with the
process ID, and a %q{FOO} format specifier, which is replaced with
the contents of the environment variable FOO.
* --child-silent-after-fork=yes|no [no]
Causes Valgrind to not show any debugging or logging output for
the child process resulting from a fork() call. This can make the
output less confusing (although more misleading) when dealing with
processes that create children.
* --cachegrind-out-file, --callgrind-out-file and --massif-out-file
These control the names of the output files produced by
Cachegrind, Callgrind and Massif. They accept the same %p and %q
format specifiers that --log-file accepts. --callgrind-out-file
replaces Callgrind's old --base option.
* Cachegrind's 'cg_annotate' script no longer uses the --<pid>
option to specify the output file. Instead, the first non-option
argument is taken to be the name of the output file, and any
subsequent non-option arguments are taken to be the names of
source files to be annotated.
* Cachegrind and Callgrind now use directory names where possible in
their output files. This means that the -I option to
'cg_annotate' and 'callgrind_annotate' should not be needed in
most cases. It also means they can correctly handle the case
where two source files in different directories have the same
name.
- Memcheck offers a new suppression kind: "Jump". This is for
suppressing jump-to-invalid-address errors. Previously you had to
use an "Addr1" suppression, which didn't make much sense.
- Memcheck has new flags --malloc-fill=<hexnum> and
--free-fill=<hexnum> which free malloc'd / free'd areas with the
specified byte. This can help shake out obscure memory corruption
problems. The definedness and addressability of these areas is
unchanged -- only the contents are affected.
- The behaviour of Memcheck's client requests VALGRIND_GET_VBITS and
VALGRIND_SET_VBITS have changed slightly. They no longer issue
addressability errors -- if either array is partially unaddressable,
they just return 3 (as before). Also, SET_VBITS doesn't report
definedness errors if any of the V bits are undefined.
- The following Memcheck client requests have been removed:
VALGRIND_MAKE_NOACCESS
VALGRIND_MAKE_WRITABLE
VALGRIND_MAKE_READABLE
VALGRIND_CHECK_WRITABLE
VALGRIND_CHECK_READABLE
VALGRIND_CHECK_DEFINED
They were deprecated in 3.2.0, when equivalent but better-named client
requests were added. See the 3.2.0 release notes for more details.
- The behaviour of the tool Lackey has changed slightly. First, the output
from --trace-mem has been made more compact, to reduce the size of the
traces. Second, a new option --trace-superblocks has been added, which
shows the addresses of superblocks (code blocks) as they are executed.
- The following bugs have been fixed. Note that "n-i-bz" stands for
"not in bugzilla" -- that is, a bug that was reported to us but
never got a bugzilla entry. We encourage you to file bugs in
bugzilla (http://bugs.kde.org/enter_valgrind_bug.cgi) rather than
mailing the developers (or mailing lists) directly.
n-i-bz x86_linux_REDIR_FOR_index() broken
n-i-bz guest-amd64/toIR.c:2512 (dis_op2_E_G): Assertion `0' failed.
n-i-bz Support x86 INT insn (INT (0xCD) 0x40 - 0x43)
n-i-bz Add sys_utimensat system call for Linux x86 platform
79844 Helgrind complains about race condition which does not exist
82871 Massif output function names too short
89061 Massif: ms_main.c:485 (get_XCon): Assertion `xpt->max_chi...'
92615 Write output from Massif at crash
95483 massif feature request: include peak allocation in report
112163 MASSIF crashed with signal 7 (SIGBUS) after running 2 days
119404 problems running setuid executables (partial fix)
121629 add instruction-counting mode for timing
127371 java vm giving unhandled instruction bytes: 0x26 0x2E 0x64 0x65
129937 ==150380
129576 Massif loses track of memory, incorrect graphs
132132 massif --format=html output does not do html entity escaping
132950 Heap alloc/usage summary
133962 unhandled instruction bytes: 0xF2 0x4C 0xF 0x10
134990 use -fno-stack-protector if possible
136382 ==134990
137396 I would really like helgrind to work again...
137714 x86/amd64->IR: 0x66 0xF 0xF7 0xC6 (maskmovq, maskmovdq)
141631 Massif: percentages don't add up correctly
142706 massif numbers don't seem to add up
143062 massif crashes on app exit with signal 8 SIGFPE
144453 (get_XCon): Assertion 'xpt->max_children != 0' failed.
145559 valgrind aborts when malloc_stats is called
145609 valgrind aborts all runs with 'repeated section!'
145622 --db-attach broken again on x86-64
145837 ==149519
145887 PPC32: getitimer() system call is not supported
146252 ==150678
146456 (update_XCon): Assertion 'xpt->curr_space >= -space_delta'...
146701 ==134990
146781 Adding support for private futexes
147325 valgrind internal error on syscall (SYS_io_destroy, 0)
147498 amd64->IR: 0xF0 0xF 0xB0 0xF (lock cmpxchg %cl,(%rdi))
147545 Memcheck: mc_main.c:817 (get_sec_vbits8): Assertion 'n' failed.
147628 SALC opcode 0xd6 unimplemented
147825 crash on amd64-linux with gcc 4.2 and glibc 2.6 (CFI)
148174 Incorrect type of freed_list_volume causes assertion [...]
148447 x86_64 : new NOP codes: 66 66 66 66 2e 0f 1f
149182 PPC Trap instructions not implemented in valgrind
149504 Assertion hit on alloc_xpt->curr_space >= -space_delta
149519 ppc32: V aborts with SIGSEGV on execution of a signal handler
149892 ==137714
150044 SEGV during stack deregister
150380 dwarf/gcc interoperation (dwarf3 read problems)
150408 ==148447
150678 guest-amd64/toIR.c:3741 (dis_Grp5): Assertion `sz == 4' failed
151209 V unable to execute programs for users with UID > 2^16
151938 help on --db-command= misleading
152022 subw $0x28, %%sp causes assertion failure in memcheck
152357 inb and outb not recognized in 64-bit mode
152501 vex x86->IR: 0x27 0x66 0x89 0x45 (daa)
152818 vex x86->IR: 0xF3 0xAC 0xFC 0x9C (rep lodsb)
Developer-visible changes:
- The names of some functions and types within the Vex IR have
changed. Run 'svn log -r1689 VEX/pub/libvex_ir.h' for full details.
Any existing standalone tools will have to be updated to reflect
these changes. The new names should be clearer. The file
VEX/pub/libvex_ir.h is also much better commented.
- A number of new debugging command line options have been added.
These are mostly of use for debugging the symbol table and line
number readers:
--trace-symtab-patt=<patt> limit debuginfo tracing to obj name <patt>
--trace-cfi=no|yes show call-frame-info details? [no]
--debug-dump=syms mimic /usr/bin/readelf --syms
--debug-dump=line mimic /usr/bin/readelf --debug-dump=line
--debug-dump=frames mimic /usr/bin/readelf --debug-dump=frames
--sym-offsets=yes|no show syms in form 'name+offset' ? [no]
- Internally, the code base has been further factorised and
abstractified, particularly with respect to support for non-Linux
OSs.
(3.3.0.RC1: 2 Dec 2007, vex r1803, valgrind r7268).
(3.3.0.RC2: 5 Dec 2007, vex r1804, valgrind r7282).
(3.3.0.RC3: 9 Dec 2007, vex r1804, valgrind r7288).
(3.3.0: 10 Dec 2007, vex r1804, valgrind r7290).
Release 3.2.3 (29 Jan 2007)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unfortunately 3.2.2 introduced a regression which can cause an
assertion failure ("vex: the `impossible' happened: eqIRConst") when
running obscure pieces of SSE code. 3.2.3 fixes this and adds one
more glibc-2.5 intercept. In all other respects it is identical to
3.2.2. Please do not use (or package) 3.2.2; instead use 3.2.3.
n-i-bz vex: the `impossible' happened: eqIRConst
n-i-bz Add an intercept for glibc-2.5 __stpcpy_chk
(3.2.3: 29 Jan 2007, vex r1732, valgrind r6560).
Release 3.2.2 (22 Jan 2007)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.2.2 fixes a bunch of bugs in 3.2.1, adds support for glibc-2.5 based
systems (openSUSE 10.2, Fedora Core 6), improves support for icc-9.X
compiled code, and brings modest performance improvements in some
areas, including amd64 floating point, powerpc support, and startup
responsiveness on all targets.
The fixed bugs are as follows. Note that "n-i-bz" stands for "not in
bugzilla" -- that is, a bug that was reported to us but never got a
bugzilla entry. We encourage you to file bugs in bugzilla
(http://bugs.kde.org/enter_valgrind_bug.cgi) rather than mailing the
developers (or mailing lists) directly.
129390 ppc?->IR: some kind of VMX prefetch (dstt)
129968 amd64->IR: 0xF 0xAE 0x0 (fxsave)
134319 ==129968
133054 'make install' fails with syntax errors
118903 ==133054
132998 startup fails in when running on UML
134207 pkg-config output contains @VG_PLATFORM@
134727 valgrind exits with "Value too large for defined data type"
n-i-bz ppc32/64: support mcrfs
n-i-bz Cachegrind/Callgrind: Update cache parameter detection
135012 x86->IR: 0xD7 0x8A 0xE0 0xD0 (xlat)
125959 ==135012
126147 x86->IR: 0xF2 0xA5 0xF 0x77 (repne movsw)
136650 amd64->IR: 0xC2 0x8 0x0
135421 x86->IR: unhandled Grp5(R) case 6
n-i-bz Improved documentation of the IR intermediate representation
n-i-bz jcxz (x86) (users list, 8 Nov)
n-i-bz ExeContext hashing fix
n-i-bz fix CFI reading failures ("Dwarf CFI 0:24 0:32 0:48 0:7")
n-i-bz fix Cachegrind/Callgrind simulation bug
n-i-bz libmpiwrap.c: fix handling of MPI_LONG_DOUBLE
n-i-bz make User errors suppressible
136844 corrupted malloc line when using --gen-suppressions=yes
138507 ==136844
n-i-bz Speed up the JIT's register allocator
n-i-bz Fix confusing leak-checker flag hints
n-i-bz Support recent autoswamp versions
n-i-bz ppc32/64 dispatcher speedups
n-i-bz ppc64 front end rld/rlw improvements
n-i-bz ppc64 back end imm64 improvements
136300 support 64K pages on ppc64-linux
139124 == 136300
n-i-bz fix ppc insn set tests for gcc >= 4.1
137493 x86->IR: recent binutils no-ops
137714 x86->IR: 0x66 0xF 0xF7 0xC6 (maskmovdqu)
138424 "failed in UME with error 22" (produce a better error msg)
138856 ==138424
138627 Enhancement support for prctl ioctls
138896 Add support for usb ioctls
136059 ==138896
139050 ppc32->IR: mfspr 268/269 instructions not handled
n-i-bz ppc32->IR: lvxl/stvxl
n-i-bz glibc-2.5 support
n-i-bz memcheck: provide replacement for mempcpy
n-i-bz memcheck: replace bcmp in ld.so
n-i-bz Use 'ifndef' in VEX's Makefile correctly
n-i-bz Suppressions for MVL 4.0.1 on ppc32-linux
n-i-bz libmpiwrap.c: Fixes for MPICH
n-i-bz More robust handling of hinted client mmaps
139776 Invalid read in unaligned memcpy with Intel compiler v9
n-i-bz Generate valid XML even for very long fn names
n-i-bz Don't prompt about suppressions for unshown reachable leaks
139910 amd64 rcl is not supported
n-i-bz DWARF CFI reader: handle DW_CFA_undefined
n-i-bz DWARF CFI reader: handle icc9 generated CFI info better
n-i-bz fix false uninit-value errs in icc9 generated FP code
n-i-bz reduce extraneous frames in libmpiwrap.c
n-i-bz support pselect6 on amd64-linux
(3.2.2: 22 Jan 2007, vex r1729, valgrind r6545).
Release 3.2.1 (16 Sept 2006)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.2.1 adds x86/amd64 support for all SSE3 instructions except monitor
and mwait, further reduces memcheck's false error rate on all
platforms, adds support for recent binutils (in OpenSUSE 10.2 and
Fedora Rawhide) and fixes a bunch of bugs in 3.2.0. Some of the fixed
bugs were causing large programs to segfault with --tool=callgrind and
--tool=cachegrind, so an upgrade is recommended.
In view of the fact that any 3.3.0 release is unlikely to happen until
well into 1Q07, we intend to keep the 3.2.X line alive for a while
yet, and so we tentatively plan a 3.2.2 release sometime in December
06.
The fixed bugs are as follows. Note that "n-i-bz" stands for "not in
bugzilla" -- that is, a bug that was reported to us but never got a
bugzilla entry.
n-i-bz Expanding brk() into last available page asserts
n-i-bz ppc64-linux stack RZ fast-case snafu
n-i-bz 'c' in --gen-supps=yes doesn't work
n-i-bz VG_N_SEGMENTS too low (users, 28 June)
n-i-bz VG_N_SEGNAMES too low (Stu Robinson)
106852 x86->IR: fisttp (SSE3)
117172 FUTEX_WAKE does not use uaddr2
124039 Lacks support for VKI_[GP]IO_UNIMAP*
127521 amd64->IR: 0xF0 0x48 0xF 0xC7 (cmpxchg8b)
128917 amd64->IR: 0x66 0xF 0xF6 0xC4 (psadbw,SSE2)
129246 JJ: ppc32/ppc64 syscalls, w/ patch
129358 x86->IR: fisttpl (SSE3)
129866 cachegrind/callgrind causes executable to die
130020 Can't stat .so/.exe error while reading symbols
130388 Valgrind aborts when process calls malloc_trim()
130638 PATCH: ppc32 missing system calls
130785 amd64->IR: unhandled instruction "pushfq"
131481: (HINT_NOP) vex x86->IR: 0xF 0x1F 0x0 0xF
131298 ==131481
132146 Programs with long sequences of bswap[l,q]s
132918 vex amd64->IR: 0xD9 0xF8 (fprem)
132813 Assertion at priv/guest-x86/toIR.c:652 fails
133051 'cfsi->len > 0 && cfsi->len < 2000000' failed
132722 valgrind header files are not standard C
n-i-bz Livelocks entire machine (users list, Timothy Terriberry)
n-i-bz Alex Bennee mmap problem (9 Aug)
n-i-bz BartV: Don't print more lines of a stack-trace than were obtained.
n-i-bz ppc32 SuSE 10.1 redir
n-i-bz amd64 padding suppressions
n-i-bz amd64 insn printing fix.
n-i-bz ppc cmp reg,reg fix
n-i-bz x86/amd64 iropt e/rflag reduction rules
n-i-bz SuSE 10.1 (ppc32) minor fixes
133678 amd64->IR: 0x48 0xF 0xC5 0xC0 (pextrw?)
133694 aspacem assertion: aspacem_minAddr <= holeStart
n-i-bz callgrind: fix warning about malformed creator line
n-i-bz callgrind: fix annotate script for data produced with
--dump-instr=yes
n-i-bz callgrind: fix failed assertion when toggling
instrumentation mode
n-i-bz callgrind: fix annotate script fix warnings with
--collect-jumps=yes
n-i-bz docs path hardwired (Dennis Lubert)
The following bugs were not fixed, due primarily to lack of developer
time, and also because bug reporters did not answer requests for
feedback in time for the release:
129390 ppc?->IR: some kind of VMX prefetch (dstt)
129968 amd64->IR: 0xF 0xAE 0x0 (fxsave)
133054 'make install' fails with syntax errors
n-i-bz Signal race condition (users list, 13 June, Johannes Berg)
n-i-bz Unrecognised instruction at address 0x70198EC2 (users list,
19 July, Bennee)
132998 startup fails in when running on UML
The following bug was tentatively fixed on the mainline but the fix
was considered too risky to push into 3.2.X:
133154 crash when using client requests to register/deregister stack
(3.2.1: 16 Sept 2006, vex r1658, valgrind r6070).
Release 3.2.0 (7 June 2006)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.2.0 is a feature release with many significant improvements and the
usual collection of bug fixes. This release supports X86/Linux,
AMD64/Linux, PPC32/Linux and PPC64/Linux.
Performance, especially of Memcheck, is improved, Addrcheck has been
removed, Callgrind has been added, PPC64/Linux support has been added,
Lackey has been improved, and MPI support has been added. In detail:
- Memcheck has improved speed and reduced memory use. Run times are
typically reduced by 15-30%, averaging about 24% for SPEC CPU2000.
The other tools have smaller but noticeable speed improvements. We
are interested to hear what improvements users get.
Memcheck uses less memory due to the introduction of a compressed
representation for shadow memory. The space overhead has been
reduced by a factor of up to four, depending on program behaviour.
This means you should be able to run programs that use more memory
than before without hitting problems.
- Addrcheck has been removed. It has not worked since version 2.4.0,
and the speed and memory improvements to Memcheck make it redundant.
If you liked using Addrcheck because it didn't give undefined value
errors, you can use the new Memcheck option --undef-value-errors=no
to get the same behaviour.
- The number of undefined-value errors incorrectly reported by
Memcheck has been reduced (such false reports were already very
rare). In particular, efforts have been made to ensure Memcheck
works really well with gcc 4.0/4.1-generated code on X86/Linux and
AMD64/Linux.
- Josef Weidendorfer's popular Callgrind tool has been added. Folding
it in was a logical step given its popularity and usefulness, and
makes it easier for us to ensure it works "out of the box" on all
supported targets. The associated KDE KCachegrind GUI remains a
separate project.
- A new release of the Valkyrie GUI for Memcheck, version 1.2.0,
accompanies this release. Improvements over previous releases
include improved robustness, many refinements to the user interface,
and use of a standard autoconf/automake build system. You can get
it from http://www.valgrind.org/downloads/guis.html.
- Valgrind now works on PPC64/Linux. As with the AMD64/Linux port,
this supports programs using to 32G of address space. On 64-bit
capable PPC64/Linux setups, you get a dual architecture build so
that both 32-bit and 64-bit executables can be run. Linux on POWER5
is supported, and POWER4 is also believed to work. Both 32-bit and
64-bit DWARF2 is supported. This port is known to work well with
both gcc-compiled and xlc/xlf-compiled code.
- Floating point accuracy has been improved for PPC32/Linux.
Specifically, the floating point rounding mode is observed on all FP
arithmetic operations, and multiply-accumulate instructions are
preserved by the compilation pipeline. This means you should get FP
results which are bit-for-bit identical to a native run. These
improvements are also present in the PPC64/Linux port.
- Lackey, the example tool, has been improved:
* It has a new option --detailed-counts (off by default) which
causes it to print out a count of loads, stores and ALU operations
done, and their sizes.
* It has a new option --trace-mem (off by default) which causes it
to print out a trace of all memory accesses performed by a
program. It's a good starting point for building Valgrind tools
that need to track memory accesses. Read the comments at the top
of the file lackey/lk_main.c for details.
* The original instrumentation (counting numbers of instructions,
jumps, etc) is now controlled by a new option --basic-counts. It
is on by default.
- MPI support: partial support for debugging distributed applications
using the MPI library specification has been added. Valgrind is
aware of the memory state changes caused by a subset of the MPI
functions, and will carefully check data passed to the (P)MPI_
interface.
- A new flag, --error-exitcode=, has been added. This allows changing
the exit code in runs where Valgrind reported errors, which is
useful when using Valgrind as part of an automated test suite.
- Various segfaults when reading old-style "stabs" debug information
have been fixed.
- A simple performance evaluation suite has been added. See
perf/README and README_DEVELOPERS for details. There are
various bells and whistles.
- New configuration flags:
--enable-only32bit
--enable-only64bit
By default, on 64 bit platforms (ppc64-linux, amd64-linux) the build
system will attempt to build a Valgrind which supports both 32-bit
and 64-bit executables. This may not be what you want, and you can
override the default behaviour using these flags.
Please note that Helgrind is still not working. We have made an
important step towards making it work again, however, with the
addition of function wrapping (see below).
Other user-visible changes:
- Valgrind now has the ability to intercept and wrap arbitrary
functions. This is a preliminary step towards making Helgrind work
again, and was required for MPI support.
- There are some changes to Memcheck's client requests. Some of them
have changed names:
MAKE_NOACCESS --> MAKE_MEM_NOACCESS
MAKE_WRITABLE --> MAKE_MEM_UNDEFINED
MAKE_READABLE --> MAKE_MEM_DEFINED
CHECK_WRITABLE --> CHECK_MEM_IS_ADDRESSABLE
CHECK_READABLE --> CHECK_MEM_IS_DEFINED
CHECK_DEFINED --> CHECK_VALUE_IS_DEFINED
The reason for the change is that the old names are subtly
misleading. The old names will still work, but they are deprecated
and may be removed in a future release.
We also added a new client request:
MAKE_MEM_DEFINED_IF_ADDRESSABLE(a, len)
which is like MAKE_MEM_DEFINED but only affects a byte if the byte is
already addressable.
- The way client requests are encoded in the instruction stream has
changed. Unfortunately, this means 3.2.0 will not honour client
requests compiled into binaries using headers from earlier versions
of Valgrind. We will try to keep the client request encodings more
stable in future.
BUGS FIXED:
108258 NPTL pthread cleanup handlers not called
117290 valgrind is sigKILL'd on startup
117295 == 117290
118703 m_signals.c:1427 Assertion 'tst->status == VgTs_WaitSys'
118466 add %reg, %reg generates incorrect validity for bit 0
123210 New: strlen from ld-linux on amd64
123244 DWARF2 CFI reader: unhandled CFI instruction 0:18
123248 syscalls in glibc-2.4: openat, fstatat, symlinkat
123258 socketcall.recvmsg(msg.msg_iov[i] points to uninit
123535 mremap(new_addr) requires MREMAP_FIXED in 4th arg
123836 small typo in the doc
124029 ppc compile failed: `vor' gcc 3.3.5
124222 Segfault: @@don't know what type ':' is
124475 ppc32: crash (syscall?) timer_settime()
124499 amd64->IR: 0xF 0xE 0x48 0x85 (femms)
124528 FATAL: aspacem assertion failed: segment_is_sane
124697 vex x86->IR: 0xF 0x70 0xC9 0x0 (pshufw)
124892 vex x86->IR: 0xF3 0xAE (REPx SCASB)
126216 == 124892
124808 ppc32: sys_sched_getaffinity() not handled
n-i-bz Very long stabs strings crash m_debuginfo
n-i-bz amd64->IR: 0x66 0xF 0xF5 (pmaddwd)
125492 ppc32: support a bunch more syscalls
121617 ppc32/64: coredumping gives assertion failure
121814 Coregrind return error as exitcode patch
126517 == 121814
125607 amd64->IR: 0x66 0xF 0xA3 0x2 (btw etc)
125651 amd64->IR: 0xF8 0x49 0xFF 0xE3 (clc?)
126253 x86 movx is wrong
126451 3.2 SVN doesn't work on ppc32 CPU's without FPU
126217 increase # threads
126243 vex x86->IR: popw mem
126583 amd64->IR: 0x48 0xF 0xA4 0xC2 (shld $1,%rax,%rdx)
126668 amd64->IR: 0x1C 0xFF (sbb $0xff,%al)
126696 support for CDROMREADRAW ioctl and CDROMREADTOCENTRY fix
126722 assertion: segment_is_sane at m_aspacemgr/aspacemgr.c:1624
126938 bad checking for syscalls linkat, renameat, symlinkat
(3.2.0RC1: 27 May 2006, vex r1626, valgrind r5947).
(3.2.0: 7 June 2006, vex r1628, valgrind r5957).
Release 3.1.1 (15 March 2006)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.1.1 fixes a bunch of bugs reported in 3.1.0. There is no new
functionality. The fixed bugs are:
(note: "n-i-bz" means "not in bugzilla" -- this bug does not have
a bugzilla entry).
n-i-bz ppc32: fsub 3,3,3 in dispatcher doesn't clear NaNs
n-i-bz ppc32: __NR_{set,get}priority
117332 x86: missing line info with icc 8.1
117366 amd64: 0xDD 0x7C fnstsw
118274 == 117366
117367 amd64: 0xD9 0xF4 fxtract
117369 amd64: __NR_getpriority (140)
117419 ppc32: lfsu f5, -4(r11)
117419 ppc32: fsqrt
117936 more stabs problems (segfaults while reading debug info)
119914 == 117936
120345 == 117936
118239 amd64: 0xF 0xAE 0x3F (clflush)
118939 vm86old system call
n-i-bz memcheck/tests/mempool reads freed memory
n-i-bz AshleyP's custom-allocator assertion
n-i-bz Dirk strict-aliasing stuff
n-i-bz More space for debugger cmd line (Dan Thaler)
n-i-bz Clarified leak checker output message
n-i-bz AshleyP's --gen-suppressions output fix
n-i-bz cg_annotate's --sort option broken
n-i-bz OSet 64-bit fastcmp bug
n-i-bz VG_(getgroups) fix (Shinichi Noda)
n-i-bz ppc32: allocate from callee-saved FP/VMX regs
n-i-bz misaligned path word-size bug in mc_main.c
119297 Incorrect error message for sse code
120410 x86: prefetchw (0xF 0xD 0x48 0x4)
120728 TIOCSERGETLSR, TIOCGICOUNT, HDIO_GET_DMA ioctls
120658 Build fixes for gcc 2.96
120734 x86: Support for changing EIP in signal handler
n-i-bz memcheck/tests/zeropage de-looping fix
n-i-bz x86: fxtract doesn't work reliably
121662 x86: lock xadd (0xF0 0xF 0xC0 0x2)
121893 calloc does not always return zeroed memory
121901 no support for syscall tkill
n-i-bz Suppression update for Debian unstable
122067 amd64: fcmovnu (0xDB 0xD9)
n-i-bz ppc32: broken signal handling in cpu feature detection
n-i-bz ppc32: rounding mode problems (improved, partial fix only)
119482 ppc32: mtfsb1
n-i-bz ppc32: mtocrf/mfocrf
(3.1.1: 15 March 2006, vex r1597, valgrind r5771).
Release 3.1.0 (25 November 2005)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.1.0 is a feature release with a number of significant improvements:
AMD64 support is much improved, PPC32 support is good enough to be
usable, and the handling of memory management and address space is
much more robust. In detail:
- AMD64 support is much improved. The 64-bit vs. 32-bit issues in
3.0.X have been resolved, and it should "just work" now in all
cases. On AMD64 machines both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of
Valgrind are built. The right version will be invoked
automatically, even when using --trace-children and mixing execution
between 64-bit and 32-bit executables. Also, many more instructions
are supported.
- PPC32 support is now good enough to be usable. It should work with
all tools, but please let us know if you have problems. Three
classes of CPUs are supported: integer only (no FP, no Altivec),
which covers embedded PPC uses, integer and FP but no Altivec
(G3-ish), and CPUs capable of Altivec too (G4, G5).
- Valgrind's address space management has been overhauled. As a
result, Valgrind should be much more robust with programs that use
large amounts of memory. There should be many fewer "memory
exhausted" messages, and debug symbols should be read correctly on
large (eg. 300MB+) executables. On 32-bit machines the full address
space available to user programs (usually 3GB or 4GB) can be fully
utilised. On 64-bit machines up to 32GB of space is usable; when
using Memcheck that means your program can use up to about 14GB.
A side effect of this change is that Valgrind is no longer protected
against wild writes by the client. This feature was nice but relied
on the x86 segment registers and so wasn't portable.
- Most users should not notice, but as part of the address space
manager change, the way Valgrind is built has been changed. Each
tool is now built as a statically linked stand-alone executable,
rather than as a shared object that is dynamically linked with the
core. The "valgrind" program invokes the appropriate tool depending
on the --tool option. This slightly increases the amount of disk
space used by Valgrind, but it greatly simplified many things and
removed Valgrind's dependence on glibc.
Please note that Addrcheck and Helgrind are still not working. Work
is underway to reinstate them (or equivalents). We apologise for the
inconvenience.
Other user-visible changes:
- The --weird-hacks option has been renamed --sim-hints.
- The --time-stamp option no longer gives an absolute date and time.
It now prints the time elapsed since the program began.
- It should build with gcc-2.96.
- Valgrind can now run itself (see README_DEVELOPERS for how).
This is not much use to you, but it means the developers can now
profile Valgrind using Cachegrind. As a result a couple of
performance bad cases have been fixed.
- The XML output format has changed slightly. See
docs/internals/xml-output.txt.
- Core dumping has been reinstated (it was disabled in 3.0.0 and 3.0.1).
If your program crashes while running under Valgrind, a core file with
the name "vgcore.<pid>" will be created (if your settings allow core
file creation). Note that the floating point information is not all
there. If Valgrind itself crashes, the OS will create a normal core
file.
The following are some user-visible changes that occurred in earlier
versions that may not have been announced, or were announced but not
widely noticed. So we're mentioning them now.
- The --tool flag is optional once again; if you omit it, Memcheck
is run by default.
- The --num-callers flag now has a default value of 12. It was
previously 4.
- The --xml=yes flag causes Valgrind's output to be produced in XML
format. This is designed to make it easy for other programs to
consume Valgrind's output. The format is described in the file
docs/internals/xml-format.txt.
- The --gen-suppressions flag supports an "all" value that causes every
suppression to be printed without asking.
- The --log-file option no longer puts "pid" in the filename, eg. the
old name "foo.pid12345" is now "foo.12345".
- There are several graphical front-ends for Valgrind, such as Valkyrie,
Alleyoop and Valgui. See http://www.valgrind.org/downloads/guis.html
for a list.
BUGS FIXED:
109861 amd64 hangs at startup
110301 ditto
111554 valgrind crashes with Cannot allocate memory
111809 Memcheck tool doesn't start java
111901 cross-platform run of cachegrind fails on opteron
113468 (vgPlain_mprotect_range): Assertion 'r != -1' failed.
92071 Reading debugging info uses too much memory
109744 memcheck loses track of mmap from direct ld-linux.so.2
110183 tail of page with _end
82301 FV memory layout too rigid
98278 Infinite recursion possible when allocating memory
108994 Valgrind runs out of memory due to 133x overhead
115643 valgrind cannot allocate memory
105974 vg_hashtable.c static hash table
109323 ppc32: dispatch.S uses Altivec insn, which doesn't work on POWER.
109345 ptrace_setregs not yet implemented for ppc
110831 Would like to be able to run against both 32 and 64 bit
binaries on AMD64
110829 == 110831
111781 compile of valgrind-3.0.0 fails on my linux (gcc 2.X prob)
112670 Cachegrind: cg_main.c:486 (handleOneStatement ...
112941 vex x86: 0xD9 0xF4 (fxtract)
110201 == 112941
113015 vex amd64->IR: 0xE3 0x14 0x48 0x83 (jrcxz)
113126 Crash with binaries built with -gstabs+/-ggdb
104065 == 113126
115741 == 113126
113403 Partial SSE3 support on x86
113541 vex: Grp5(x86) (alt encoding inc/dec) case 1
113642 valgrind crashes when trying to read debug information
113810 vex x86->IR: 66 0F F6 (66 + PSADBW == SSE PSADBW)
113796 read() and write() do not work if buffer is in shared memory
113851 vex x86->IR: (pmaddwd): 0x66 0xF 0xF5 0xC7
114366 vex amd64 cannnot handle __asm__( "fninit" )
114412 vex amd64->IR: 0xF 0xAD 0xC2 0xD3 (128-bit shift, shrdq?)
114455 vex amd64->IR: 0xF 0xAC 0xD0 0x1 (also shrdq)
115590: amd64->IR: 0x67 0xE3 0x9 0xEB (address size override)
115953 valgrind svn r5042 does not build with parallel make (-j3)
116057 maximum instruction size - VG_MAX_INSTR_SZB too small?
116483 shmat failes with invalid argument
102202 valgrind crashes when realloc'ing until out of memory
109487 == 102202
110536 == 102202
112687 == 102202
111724 vex amd64->IR: 0x41 0xF 0xAB (more BT{,S,R,C} fun n games)
111748 vex amd64->IR: 0xDD 0xE2 (fucom)
111785 make fails if CC contains spaces
111829 vex x86->IR: sbb AL, Ib
111851 vex x86->IR: 0x9F 0x89 (lahf/sahf)
112031 iopl on AMD64 and README_MISSING_SYSCALL_OR_IOCTL update
112152 code generation for Xin_MFence on x86 with SSE0 subarch
112167 == 112152
112789 == 112152
112199 naked ar tool is used in vex makefile
112501 vex x86->IR: movq (0xF 0x7F 0xC1 0xF) (mmx MOVQ)
113583 == 112501
112538 memalign crash
113190 Broken links in docs/html/
113230 Valgrind sys_pipe on x86-64 wrongly thinks file descriptors
should be 64bit
113996 vex amd64->IR: fucomp (0xDD 0xE9)
114196 vex x86->IR: out %eax,(%dx) (0xEF 0xC9 0xC3 0x90)
114289 Memcheck fails to intercept malloc when used in an uclibc environment
114756 mbind syscall support
114757 Valgrind dies with assertion: Assertion 'noLargerThan > 0' failed
114563 stack tracking module not informed when valgrind switches threads
114564 clone() and stacks
114565 == 114564
115496 glibc crashes trying to use sysinfo page
116200 enable fsetxattr, fgetxattr, and fremovexattr for amd64
(3.1.0RC1: 20 November 2005, vex r1466, valgrind r5224).
(3.1.0: 26 November 2005, vex r1471, valgrind r5235).
Release 3.0.1 (29 August 2005)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.0.1 fixes a bunch of bugs reported in 3.0.0. There is no new
functionality. Some of the fixed bugs are critical, so if you
use/distribute 3.0.0, an upgrade to 3.0.1 is recommended. The fixed
bugs are:
(note: "n-i-bz" means "not in bugzilla" -- this bug does not have
a bugzilla entry).
109313 (== 110505) x86 cmpxchg8b
n-i-bz x86: track but ignore changes to %eflags.AC (alignment check)
110102 dis_op2_E_G(amd64)
110202 x86 sys_waitpid(#286)
110203 clock_getres(,0)
110208 execve fail wrong retval
110274 SSE1 now mandatory for x86
110388 amd64 0xDD 0xD1
110464 amd64 0xDC 0x1D FCOMP
110478 amd64 0xF 0xD PREFETCH
n-i-bz XML <unique> printing wrong
n-i-bz Dirk r4359 (amd64 syscalls from trunk)
110591 amd64 and x86: rdtsc not implemented properly
n-i-bz Nick r4384 (stub implementations of Addrcheck and Helgrind)
110652 AMD64 valgrind crashes on cwtd instruction
110653 AMD64 valgrind crashes on sarb $0x4,foo(%rip) instruction
110656 PATH=/usr/bin::/bin valgrind foobar stats ./fooba
110657 Small test fixes
110671 vex x86->IR: unhandled instruction bytes: 0xF3 0xC3 (rep ret)
n-i-bz Nick (Cachegrind should not assert when it encounters a client
request.)
110685 amd64->IR: unhandled instruction bytes: 0xE1 0x56 (loope Jb)
110830 configuring with --host fails to build 32 bit on 64 bit target
110875 Assertion when execve fails
n-i-bz Updates to Memcheck manual
n-i-bz Fixed broken malloc_usable_size()
110898 opteron instructions missing: btq btsq btrq bsfq
110954 x86->IR: unhandled instruction bytes: 0xE2 0xF6 (loop Jb)
n-i-bz Make suppressions work for "???" lines in stacktraces.
111006 bogus warnings from linuxthreads
111092 x86: dis_Grp2(Reg): unhandled case(x86)
111231 sctp_getladdrs() and sctp_getpaddrs() returns uninitialized
memory
111102 (comment #4) Fixed 64-bit unclean "silly arg" message
n-i-bz vex x86->IR: unhandled instruction bytes: 0x14 0x0
n-i-bz minor umount/fcntl wrapper fixes
111090 Internal Error running Massif
101204 noisy warning
111513 Illegal opcode for SSE instruction (x86 movups)
111555 VEX/Makefile: CC is set to gcc
n-i-bz Fix XML bugs in FAQ
(3.0.1: 29 August 05,
vex/branches/VEX_3_0_BRANCH r1367,
valgrind/branches/VALGRIND_3_0_BRANCH r4574).
Release 3.0.0 (3 August 2005)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.0.0 is a major overhaul of Valgrind. The most significant user
visible change is that Valgrind now supports architectures other than
x86. The new architectures it supports are AMD64 and PPC32, and the
infrastructure is present for other architectures to be added later.
AMD64 support works well, but has some shortcomings:
- It generally won't be as solid as the x86 version. For example,
support for more obscure instructions and system calls may be missing.
We will fix these as they arise.
- Address space may be limited; see the point about
position-independent executables below.
- If Valgrind is built on an AMD64 machine, it will only run 64-bit
executables. If you want to run 32-bit x86 executables under Valgrind
on an AMD64, you will need to build Valgrind on an x86 machine and
copy it to the AMD64 machine. And it probably won't work if you do
something tricky like exec'ing a 32-bit program from a 64-bit program
while using --trace-children=yes. We hope to improve this situation
in the future.
The PPC32 support is very basic. It may not work reliably even for
small programs, but it's a start. Many thanks to Paul Mackerras for
his great work that enabled this support. We are working to make
PPC32 usable as soon as possible.
Other user-visible changes:
- Valgrind is no longer built by default as a position-independent
executable (PIE), as this caused too many problems.
Without PIE enabled, AMD64 programs will only be able to access 2GB of
address space. We will fix this eventually, but not for the moment.
Use --enable-pie at configure-time to turn this on.
- Support for programs that use stack-switching has been improved. Use
the --max-stackframe flag for simple cases, and the
VALGRIND_STACK_REGISTER, VALGRIND_STACK_DEREGISTER and
VALGRIND_STACK_CHANGE client requests for trickier cases.
- Support for programs that use self-modifying code has been improved,
in particular programs that put temporary code fragments on the stack.
This helps for C programs compiled with GCC that use nested functions,
and also Ada programs. This is controlled with the --smc-check
flag, although the default setting should work in most cases.
- Output can now be printed in XML format. This should make it easier
for tools such as GUI front-ends and automated error-processing
schemes to use Valgrind output as input. The --xml flag controls this.
As part of this change, ELF directory information is read from executables,
so absolute source file paths are available if needed.
- Programs that allocate many heap blocks may run faster, due to
improvements in certain data structures.
- Addrcheck is currently not working. We hope to get it working again
soon. Helgrind is still not working, as was the case for the 2.4.0
release.
- The JITter has been completely rewritten, and is now in a separate
library, called Vex. This enabled a lot of the user-visible changes,
such as new architecture support. The new JIT unfortunately translates
more slowly than the old one, so programs may take longer to start.
We believe the code quality is produces is about the same, so once
started, programs should run at about the same speed. Feedback about
this would be useful.
On the plus side, Vex and hence Memcheck tracks value flow properly
through floating point and vector registers, something the 2.X line
could not do. That means that Memcheck is much more likely to be
usably accurate on vectorised code.
- There is a subtle change to the way exiting of threaded programs
is handled. In 3.0, Valgrind's final diagnostic output (leak check,
etc) is not printed until the last thread exits. If the last thread
to exit was not the original thread which started the program, any
other process wait()-ing on this one to exit may conclude it has
finished before the diagnostic output is printed. This may not be
what you expect. 2.X had a different scheme which avoided this
problem, but caused deadlocks under obscure circumstances, so we
are trying something different for 3.0.
- Small changes in control log file naming which make it easier to
use valgrind for debugging MPI-based programs. The relevant
new flags are --log-file-exactly= and --log-file-qualifier=.
- As part of adding AMD64 support, DWARF2 CFI-based stack unwinding
support was added. In principle this means Valgrind can produce
meaningful backtraces on x86 code compiled with -fomit-frame-pointer
providing you also compile your code with -fasynchronous-unwind-tables.
- The documentation build system has been completely redone.
The documentation masters are now in XML format, and from that
HTML, PostScript and PDF documentation is generated. As a result
the manual is now available in book form. Note that the
documentation in the source tarballs is pre-built, so you don't need
any XML processing tools to build Valgrind from a tarball.
Changes that are not user-visible:
- The code has been massively overhauled in order to modularise it.
As a result we hope it is easier to navigate and understand.
- Lots of code has been rewritten.
BUGS FIXED:
110046 sz == 4 assertion failed
109810 vex amd64->IR: unhandled instruction bytes: 0xA3 0x4C 0x70 0xD7
109802 Add a plausible_stack_size command-line parameter ?
109783 unhandled ioctl TIOCMGET (running hw detection tool discover)
109780 unhandled ioctl BLKSSZGET (running fdisk -l /dev/hda)
109718 vex x86->IR: unhandled instruction: ffreep
109429 AMD64 unhandled syscall: 127 (sigpending)
109401 false positive uninit in strchr from ld-linux.so.2
109385 "stabs" parse failure
109378 amd64: unhandled instruction REP NOP
109376 amd64: unhandled instruction LOOP Jb
109363 AMD64 unhandled instruction bytes
109362 AMD64 unhandled syscall: 24 (sched_yield)
109358 fork() won't work with valgrind-3.0 SVN
109332 amd64 unhandled instruction: ADC Ev, Gv
109314 Bogus memcheck report on amd64
108883 Crash; vg_memory.c:905 (vgPlain_init_shadow_range):
Assertion `vgPlain_defined_init_shadow_page()' failed.
108349 mincore syscall parameter checked incorrectly
108059 build infrastructure: small update
107524 epoll_ctl event parameter checked on EPOLL_CTL_DEL
107123 Vex dies with unhandled instructions: 0xD9 0x31 0xF 0xAE
106841 auxmap & openGL problems
106713 SDL_Init causes valgrind to exit
106352 setcontext and makecontext not handled correctly
106293 addresses beyond initial client stack allocation
not checked in VALGRIND_DO_LEAK_CHECK
106283 PIE client programs are loaded at address 0
105831 Assertion `vgPlain_defined_init_shadow_page()' failed.
105039 long run-times probably due to memory manager
104797 valgrind needs to be aware of BLKGETSIZE64
103594 unhandled instruction: FICOM
103320 Valgrind 2.4.0 fails to compile with gcc 3.4.3 and -O0
103168 potentially memory leak in coregrind/ume.c
102039 bad permissions for mapped region at address 0xB7C73680
101881 weird assertion problem
101543 Support fadvise64 syscalls
75247 x86_64/amd64 support (the biggest "bug" we have ever fixed)
(3.0RC1: 27 July 05, vex r1303, valgrind r4283).
(3.0.0: 3 August 05, vex r1313, valgrind r4316).
Stable release 2.4.1 (1 August 2005)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(The notes for this release have been lost. Sorry! It would have
contained various bug fixes but no new features.)
Stable release 2.4.0 (March 2005) -- CHANGES RELATIVE TO 2.2.0
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2.4.0 brings many significant changes and bug fixes. The most
significant user-visible change is that we no longer supply our own
pthread implementation. Instead, Valgrind is finally capable of
running the native thread library, either LinuxThreads or NPTL.
This means our libpthread has gone, along with the bugs associated
with it. Valgrind now supports the kernel's threading syscalls, and
lets you use your standard system libpthread. As a result:
* There are many fewer system dependencies and strange library-related
bugs. There is a small performance improvement, and a large
stability improvement.
* On the downside, Valgrind can no longer report misuses of the POSIX
PThreads API. It also means that Helgrind currently does not work.
We hope to fix these problems in a future release.
Note that running the native thread libraries does not mean Valgrind
is able to provide genuine concurrent execution on SMPs. We still
impose the restriction that only one thread is running at any given
time.
There are many other significant changes too:
* Memcheck is (once again) the default tool.
* The default stack backtrace is now 12 call frames, rather than 4.
* Suppressions can have up to 25 call frame matches, rather than 4.
* Memcheck and Addrcheck use less memory. Under some circumstances,
they no longer allocate shadow memory if there are large regions of
memory with the same A/V states - such as an mmaped file.
* The memory-leak detector in Memcheck and Addrcheck has been
improved. It now reports more types of memory leak, including
leaked cycles. When reporting leaked memory, it can distinguish
between directly leaked memory (memory with no references), and
indirectly leaked memory (memory only referred to by other leaked
memory).
* Memcheck's confusion over the effect of mprotect() has been fixed:
previously mprotect could erroneously mark undefined data as
defined.
* Signal handling is much improved and should be very close to what
you get when running natively.
One result of this is that Valgrind observes changes to sigcontexts
passed to signal handlers. Such modifications will take effect when
the signal returns. You will need to run with --single-step=yes to
make this useful.
* Valgrind is built in Position Independent Executable (PIE) format if
your toolchain supports it. This allows it to take advantage of all
the available address space on systems with 4Gbyte user address
spaces.
* Valgrind can now run itself (requires PIE support).
* Syscall arguments are now checked for validity. Previously all
memory used by syscalls was checked, but now the actual values
passed are also checked.
* Syscall wrappers are more robust against bad addresses being passed
to syscalls: they will fail with EFAULT rather than killing Valgrind
with SIGSEGV.
* Because clone() is directly supported, some non-pthread uses of it
will work. Partial sharing (where some resources are shared, and
some are not) is not supported.
* open() and readlink() on /proc/self/exe are supported.
BUGS FIXED:
88520 pipe+fork+dup2 kills the main program
88604 Valgrind Aborts when using $VALGRIND_OPTS and user progra...
88614 valgrind: vg_libpthread.c:2323 (read): Assertion `read_pt...
88703 Stabs parser fails to handle ";"
88886 ioctl wrappers for TIOCMBIS and TIOCMBIC
89032 valgrind pthread_cond_timedwait fails
89106 the 'impossible' happened
89139 Missing sched_setaffinity & sched_getaffinity
89198 valgrind lacks support for SIOCSPGRP and SIOCGPGRP
89263 Missing ioctl translations for scsi-generic and CD playing
89440 tests/deadlock.c line endings
89481 `impossible' happened: EXEC FAILED
89663 valgrind 2.2.0 crash on Redhat 7.2
89792 Report pthread_mutex_lock() deadlocks instead of returnin...
90111 statvfs64 gives invalid error/warning
90128 crash+memory fault with stabs generated by gnat for a run...
90778 VALGRIND_CHECK_DEFINED() not as documented in memcheck.h
90834 cachegrind crashes at end of program without reporting re...
91028 valgrind: vg_memory.c:229 (vgPlain_unmap_range): Assertio...
91162 valgrind crash while debugging drivel 1.2.1
91199 Unimplemented function
91325 Signal routing does not propagate the siginfo structure
91599 Assertion `cv == ((void *)0)'
91604 rw_lookup clears orig and sends the NULL value to rw_new
91821 Small problems building valgrind with $top_builddir ne $t...
91844 signal 11 (SIGSEGV) at get_tcb (libpthread.c:86) in corec...
92264 UNIMPLEMENTED FUNCTION: pthread_condattr_setpshared
92331 per-target flags necessitate AM_PROG_CC_C_O
92420 valgrind doesn't compile with linux 2.6.8.1/9
92513 Valgrind 2.2.0 generates some warning messages
92528 vg_symtab2.c:170 (addLoc): Assertion `loc->size > 0' failed.
93096 unhandled ioctl 0x4B3A and 0x5601
93117 Tool and core interface versions do not match
93128 Can't run valgrind --tool=memcheck because of unimplement...
93174 Valgrind can crash if passed bad args to certain syscalls
93309 Stack frame in new thread is badly aligned
93328 Wrong types used with sys_sigprocmask()
93763 /usr/include/asm/msr.h is missing
93776 valgrind: vg_memory.c:508 (vgPlain_find_map_space): Asser...
93810 fcntl() argument checking a bit too strict
94378 Assertion `tst->sigqueue_head != tst->sigqueue_tail' failed.
94429 valgrind 2.2.0 segfault with mmap64 in glibc 2.3.3
94645 Impossible happened: PINSRW mem
94953 valgrind: the `impossible' happened: SIGSEGV
95667 Valgrind does not work with any KDE app
96243 Assertion 'res==0' failed
96252 stage2 loader of valgrind fails to allocate memory
96520 All programs crashing at _dl_start (in /lib/ld-2.3.3.so) ...
96660 ioctl CDROMREADTOCENTRY causes bogus warnings
96747 After looping in a segfault handler, the impossible happens
96923 Zero sized arrays crash valgrind trace back with SIGFPE
96948 valgrind stops with assertion failure regarding mmap2
96966 valgrind fails when application opens more than 16 sockets
97398 valgrind: vg_libpthread.c:2667 Assertion failed
97407 valgrind: vg_mylibc.c:1226 (vgPlain_safe_fd): Assertion `...
97427 "Warning: invalid file descriptor -1 in syscall close()" ...
97785 missing backtrace
97792 build in obj dir fails - autoconf / makefile cleanup
97880 pthread_mutex_lock fails from shared library (special ker...
97975 program aborts without ang VG messages
98129 Failed when open and close file 230000 times using stdio
98175 Crashes when using valgrind-2.2.0 with a program using al...
98288 Massif broken
98303 UNIMPLEMENTED FUNCTION pthread_condattr_setpshared
98630 failed--compilation missing warnings.pm, fails to make he...
98756 Cannot valgrind signal-heavy kdrive X server
98966 valgrinding the JVM fails with a sanity check assertion
99035 Valgrind crashes while profiling
99142 loops with message "Signal 11 being dropped from thread 0...
99195 threaded apps crash on thread start (using QThread::start...
99348 Assertion `vgPlain_lseek(core_fd, 0, 1) == phdrs[i].p_off...
99568 False negative due to mishandling of mprotect
99738 valgrind memcheck crashes on program that uses sigitimer
99923 0-sized allocations are reported as leaks
99949 program seg faults after exit()
100036 "newSuperblock's request for 1048576 bytes failed"
100116 valgrind: (pthread_cond_init): Assertion `sizeof(* cond) ...
100486 memcheck reports "valgrind: the `impossible' happened: V...
100833 second call to "mremap" fails with EINVAL
101156 (vgPlain_find_map_space): Assertion `(addr & ((1 << 12)-1...
101173 Assertion `recDepth >= 0 && recDepth < 500' failed
101291 creating threads in a forked process fails
101313 valgrind causes different behavior when resizing a window...
101423 segfault for c++ array of floats
101562 valgrind massif dies on SIGINT even with signal handler r...
Stable release 2.2.0 (31 August 2004) -- CHANGES RELATIVE TO 2.0.0
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2.2.0 brings nine months worth of improvements and bug fixes. We
believe it to be a worthy successor to 2.0.0. There are literally
hundreds of bug fixes and minor improvements. There are also some
fairly major user-visible changes:
* A complete overhaul of handling of system calls and signals, and
their interaction with threads. In general, the accuracy of the
system call, thread and signal simulations is much improved:
- Blocking system calls behave exactly as they do when running
natively (not on valgrind). That is, if a syscall blocks only the
calling thread when running natively, than it behaves the same on
valgrind. No more mysterious hangs because V doesn't know that some
syscall or other, should block only the calling thread.
- Interrupted syscalls should now give more faithful results.
- Signal contexts in signal handlers are supported.
* Improvements to NPTL support to the extent that V now works
properly on NPTL-only setups.
* Greater isolation between Valgrind and the program being run, so
the program is less likely to inadvertently kill Valgrind by
doing wild writes.
* Massif: a new space profiling tool. Try it! It's cool, and it'll
tell you in detail where and when your C/C++ code is allocating heap.
Draws pretty .ps pictures of memory use against time. A potentially
powerful tool for making sense of your program's space use.
* File descriptor leakage checks. When enabled, Valgrind will print out
a list of open file descriptors on exit.
* Improved SSE2/SSE3 support.
* Time-stamped output; use --time-stamp=yes
Stable release 2.2.0 (31 August 2004) -- CHANGES RELATIVE TO 2.1.2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2.2.0 is not much different from 2.1.2, released seven weeks ago.
A number of bugs have been fixed, most notably #85658, which gave
problems for quite a few people. There have been many internal
cleanups, but those are not user visible.
The following bugs have been fixed since 2.1.2:
85658 Assert in coregrind/vg_libpthread.c:2326 (open64) !=
(void*)0 failed
This bug was reported multiple times, and so the following
duplicates of it are also fixed: 87620, 85796, 85935, 86065,
86919, 86988, 87917, 88156
80716 Semaphore mapping bug caused by unmap (sem_destroy)
(Was fixed prior to 2.1.2)
86987 semctl and shmctl syscalls family is not handled properly
86696 valgrind 2.1.2 + RH AS2.1 + librt
86730 valgrind locks up at end of run with assertion failure
in __pthread_unwind
86641 memcheck doesn't work with Mesa OpenGL/ATI on Suse 9.1
(also fixes 74298, a duplicate of this)
85947 MMX/SSE unhandled instruction 'sfence'
84978 Wrong error "Conditional jump or move depends on
uninitialised value" resulting from "sbbl %reg, %reg"
86254 ssort() fails when signed int return type from comparison is
too small to handle result of unsigned int subtraction
87089 memalign( 4, xxx) makes valgrind assert
86407 Add support for low-level parallel port driver ioctls.
70587 Add timestamps to Valgrind output? (wishlist)
84937 vg_libpthread.c:2505 (se_remap): Assertion `res == 0'
(fixed prior to 2.1.2)
86317 cannot load libSDL-1.2.so.0 using valgrind
86989 memcpy from mac_replace_strmem.c complains about
uninitialized pointers passed when length to copy is zero
85811 gnu pascal symbol causes segmentation fault; ok in 2.0.0
79138 writing to sbrk()'d memory causes segfault
77369 sched deadlock while signal received during pthread_join
and the joined thread exited
88115 In signal handler for SIGFPE, siginfo->si_addr is wrong
under Valgrind
78765 Massif crashes on app exit if FP exceptions are enabled
Additionally there are the following changes, which are not
connected to any bug report numbers, AFAICS:
* Fix scary bug causing mis-identification of SSE stores vs
loads and so causing memcheck to sometimes give nonsense results
on SSE code.
* Add support for the POSIX message queue system calls.
* Fix to allow 32-bit Valgrind to run on AMD64 boxes. Note: this does
NOT allow Valgrind to work with 64-bit executables - only with 32-bit
executables on an AMD64 box.
* At configure time, only check whether linux/mii.h can be processed
so that we don't generate ugly warnings by trying to compile it.
* Add support for POSIX clocks and timers.
Developer (cvs head) release 2.1.2 (18 July 2004)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2.1.2 contains four months worth of bug fixes and refinements.
Although officially a developer release, we believe it to be stable
enough for widespread day-to-day use. 2.1.2 is pretty good, so try it
first, although there is a chance it won't work. If so then try 2.0.0
and tell us what went wrong." 2.1.2 fixes a lot of problems present
in 2.0.0 and is generally a much better product.
Relative to 2.1.1, a large number of minor problems with 2.1.1 have
been fixed, and so if you use 2.1.1 you should try 2.1.2. Users of
the last stable release, 2.0.0, might also want to try this release.
The following bugs, and probably many more, have been fixed. These
are listed at http://bugs.kde.org. Reporting a bug for valgrind in
the http://bugs.kde.org is much more likely to get you a fix than
mailing developers directly, so please continue to keep sending bugs
there.
76869 Crashes when running any tool under Fedora Core 2 test1
This fixes the problem with returning from a signal handler
when VDSOs are turned off in FC2.
69508 java 1.4.2 client fails with erroneous "stack size too small".
This fix makes more of the pthread stack attribute related
functions work properly. Java still doesn't work though.
71906 malloc alignment should be 8, not 4
All memory returned by malloc/new etc is now at least
8-byte aligned.
81970 vg_alloc_ThreadState: no free slots available
(closed because the workaround is simple: increase
VG_N_THREADS, rebuild and try again.)
78514 Conditional jump or move depends on uninitialized value(s)
(a slight mishanding of FP code in memcheck)
77952 pThread Support (crash) (due to initialisation-ordering probs)
(also 85118)
80942 Addrcheck wasn't doing overlap checking as it should.
78048 return NULL on malloc/new etc failure, instead of asserting
73655 operator new() override in user .so files often doesn't get picked up
83060 Valgrind does not handle native kernel AIO
69872 Create proper coredumps after fatal signals
82026 failure with new glibc versions: __libc_* functions are not exported
70344 UNIMPLEMENTED FUNCTION: tcdrain
81297 Cancellation of pthread_cond_wait does not require mutex
82872 Using debug info from additional packages (wishlist)
83025 Support for ioctls FIGETBSZ and FIBMAP
83340 Support for ioctl HDIO_GET_IDENTITY
79714 Support for the semtimedop system call.
77022 Support for ioctls FBIOGET_VSCREENINFO and FBIOGET_FSCREENINFO
82098 hp2ps ansification (wishlist)
83573 Valgrind SIGSEGV on execve
82999 show which cmdline option was erroneous (wishlist)
83040 make valgrind VPATH and distcheck-clean (wishlist)
83998 Assertion `newfd > vgPlain_max_fd' failed (see below)
82722 Unchecked mmap in as_pad leads to mysterious failures later
78958 memcheck seg faults while running Mozilla
85416 Arguments with colon (e.g. --logsocket) ignored
Additionally there are the following changes, which are not
connected to any bug report numbers, AFAICS:
* Rearranged address space layout relative to 2.1.1, so that
Valgrind/tools will run out of memory later than currently in many
circumstances. This is good news esp. for Calltree. It should
be possible for client programs to allocate over 800MB of
memory when using memcheck now.
* Improved checking when laying out memory. Should hopefully avoid
the random segmentation faults that 2.1.1 sometimes caused.
* Support for Fedora Core 2 and SuSE 9.1. Improvements to NPTL
support to the extent that V now works properly on NPTL-only setups.
* Renamed the following options:
--logfile-fd --> --log-fd
--logfile --> --log-file
--logsocket --> --log-socket
to be consistent with each other and other options (esp. --input-fd).
* Add support for SIOCGMIIPHY, SIOCGMIIREG and SIOCSMIIREG ioctls and
improve the checking of other interface related ioctls.
* Fix building with gcc-3.4.1.
* Remove limit on number of semaphores supported.
* Add support for syscalls: set_tid_address (258), acct (51).
* Support instruction "repne movs" -- not official but seems to occur.
* Implement an emulated soft limit for file descriptors in addition to
the current reserved area, which effectively acts as a hard limit. The
setrlimit system call now simply updates the emulated limits as best
as possible - the hard limit is not allowed to move at all and just
returns EPERM if you try and change it. This should stop reductions
in the soft limit causing assertions when valgrind tries to allocate
descriptors from the reserved area.
(This actually came from bug #83998).
* Major overhaul of Cachegrind implementation. First user-visible change
is that cachegrind.out files are now typically 90% smaller than they
used to be; code annotation times are correspondingly much smaller.
Second user-visible change is that hit/miss counts for code that is
unloaded at run-time is no longer dumped into a single "discard" pile,
but accurately preserved.
* Client requests for telling valgrind about memory pools.
Developer (cvs head) release 2.1.1 (12 March 2004)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2.1.1 contains some internal structural changes needed for V's
long-term future. These don't affect end-users. Most notable
user-visible changes are:
* Greater isolation between Valgrind and the program being run, so
the program is less likely to inadvertently kill Valgrind by
doing wild writes.
* Massif: a new space profiling tool. Try it! It's cool, and it'll
tell you in detail where and when your C/C++ code is allocating heap.
Draws pretty .ps pictures of memory use against time. A potentially
powerful tool for making sense of your program's space use.
* Fixes for many bugs, including support for more SSE2/SSE3 instructions,
various signal/syscall things, and various problems with debug
info readers.
* Support for glibc-2.3.3 based systems.
We are now doing automatic overnight build-and-test runs on a variety
of distros. As a result, we believe 2.1.1 builds and runs on:
Red Hat 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, 9, Fedora Core 1, SuSE 8.2, SuSE 9.
The following bugs, and probably many more, have been fixed. These
are listed at http://bugs.kde.org. Reporting a bug for valgrind in
the http://bugs.kde.org is much more likely to get you a fix than
mailing developers directly, so please continue to keep sending bugs
there.
69616 glibc 2.3.2 w/NPTL is massively different than what valgrind expects
69856 I don't know how to instrument MMXish stuff (Helgrind)
73892 valgrind segfaults starting with Objective-C debug info
(fix for S-type stabs)
73145 Valgrind complains too much about close(<reserved fd>)
73902 Shadow memory allocation seems to fail on RedHat 8.0
68633 VG_N_SEMAPHORES too low (V itself was leaking semaphores)
75099 impossible to trace multiprocess programs
76839 the `impossible' happened: disInstr: INT but not 0x80 !
76762 vg_to_ucode.c:3748 (dis_push_segreg): Assertion `sz == 4' failed.
76747 cannot include valgrind.h in c++ program
76223 parsing B(3,10) gave NULL type => impossible happens
75604 shmdt handling problem
76416 Problems with gcc 3.4 snap 20040225
75614 using -gstabs when building your programs the `impossible' happened
75787 Patch for some CDROM ioctls CDORM_GET_MCN, CDROM_SEND_PACKET,
75294 gcc 3.4 snapshot's libstdc++ have unsupported instructions.
(REP RET)
73326 vg_symtab2.c:272 (addScopeRange): Assertion `range->size > 0' failed.
72596 not recognizing __libc_malloc
69489 Would like to attach ddd to running program
72781 Cachegrind crashes with kde programs
73055 Illegal operand at DXTCV11CompressBlockSSE2 (more SSE opcodes)
73026 Descriptor leak check reports port numbers wrongly
71705 README_MISSING_SYSCALL_OR_IOCTL out of date
72643 Improve support for SSE/SSE2 instructions
72484 valgrind leaves it's own signal mask in place when execing
72650 Signal Handling always seems to restart system calls
72006 The mmap system call turns all errors in ENOMEM
71781 gdb attach is pretty useless
71180 unhandled instruction bytes: 0xF 0xAE 0x85 0xE8
69886 writes to zero page cause valgrind to assert on exit
71791 crash when valgrinding gimp 1.3 (stabs reader problem)
69783 unhandled syscall: 218
69782 unhandled instruction bytes: 0x66 0xF 0x2B 0x80
70385 valgrind fails if the soft file descriptor limit is less
than about 828
69529 "rep; nop" should do a yield
70827 programs with lots of shared libraries report "mmap failed"
for some of them when reading symbols
71028 glibc's strnlen is optimised enough to confuse valgrind
Unstable (cvs head) release 2.1.0 (15 December 2003)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For whatever it's worth, 2.1.0 actually seems pretty darn stable to me
(Julian). It looks eminently usable, and given that it fixes some
significant bugs, may well be worth using on a day-to-day basis.
2.1.0 is known to build and pass regression tests on: SuSE 9, SuSE
8.2, RedHat 8.
2.1.0 most notably includes Jeremy Fitzhardinge's complete overhaul of
handling of system calls and signals, and their interaction with
threads. In general, the accuracy of the system call, thread and
signal simulations is much improved. Specifically:
- Blocking system calls behave exactly as they do when running
natively (not on valgrind). That is, if a syscall blocks only the
calling thread when running natively, than it behaves the same on
valgrind. No more mysterious hangs because V doesn't know that some
syscall or other, should block only the calling thread.
- Interrupted syscalls should now give more faithful results.
- Finally, signal contexts in signal handlers are supported. As a
result, konqueror on SuSE 9 no longer segfaults when notified of
file changes in directories it is watching.
Other changes:
- Robert Walsh's file descriptor leakage checks. When enabled,
Valgrind will print out a list of open file descriptors on
exit. Along with each file descriptor, Valgrind prints out a stack
backtrace of where the file was opened and any details relating to the
file descriptor such as the file name or socket details.
To use, give: --track-fds=yes
- Implemented a few more SSE/SSE2 instructions.
- Less crud on the stack when you do 'where' inside a GDB attach.
- Fixed the following bugs:
68360: Valgrind does not compile against 2.6.0-testX kernels
68525: CVS head doesn't compile on C90 compilers
68566: pkgconfig support (wishlist)
68588: Assertion `sz == 4' failed in vg_to_ucode.c (disInstr)
69140: valgrind not able to explicitly specify a path to a binary.
69432: helgrind asserts encountering a MutexErr when there are
EraserErr suppressions
- Increase the max size of the translation cache from 200k average bbs
to 300k average bbs. Programs on the size of OOo (680m17) are
thrashing the cache at the smaller size, creating large numbers of
retranslations and wasting significant time as a result.
Stable release 2.0.0 (5 Nov 2003)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2.0.0 improves SSE/SSE2 support, fixes some minor bugs, and
improves support for SuSE 9 and the Red Hat "Severn" beta.
- Further improvements to SSE/SSE2 support. The entire test suite of
the GNU Scientific Library (gsl-1.4) compiled with Intel Icc 7.1
20030307Z '-g -O -xW' now works. I think this gives pretty good
coverage of SSE/SSE2 floating point instructions, or at least the
subset emitted by Icc.
- Also added support for the following instructions:
MOVNTDQ UCOMISD UNPCKLPS UNPCKHPS SQRTSS
PUSH/POP %{FS,GS}, and PUSH %CS (Nb: there is no POP %CS).
- CFI support for GDB version 6. Needed to enable newer GDBs
to figure out where they are when using --gdb-attach=yes.
- Fix this:
mc_translate.c:1091 (memcheck_instrument): Assertion
`u_in->size == 4 || u_in->size == 16' failed.
- Return an error rather than panicing when given a bad socketcall.
- Fix checking of syscall rt_sigtimedwait().
- Implement __NR_clock_gettime (syscall 265). Needed on Red Hat Severn.
- Fixed bug in overlap check in strncpy() -- it was assuming the src was 'n'
bytes long, when it could be shorter, which could cause false
positives.
- Support use of select() for very large numbers of file descriptors.
- Don't fail silently if the executable is statically linked, or is
setuid/setgid. Print an error message instead.
- Support for old DWARF-1 format line number info.
Snapshot 20031012 (12 October 2003)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Three months worth of bug fixes, roughly. Most significant single
change is improved SSE/SSE2 support, mostly thanks to Dirk Mueller.
20031012 builds on Red Hat Fedora ("Severn") but doesn't really work
(curiously, mozilla runs OK, but a modest "ls -l" bombs). I hope to
get a working version out soon. It may or may not work ok on the
forthcoming SuSE 9; I hear positive noises about it but haven't been
able to verify this myself (not until I get hold of a copy of 9).
A detailed list of changes, in no particular order:
- Describe --gen-suppressions in the FAQ.
- Syscall __NR_waitpid supported.
- Minor MMX bug fix.
- -v prints program's argv[] at startup.
- More glibc-2.3 suppressions.
- Suppressions for stack underrun bug(s) in the c++ support library
distributed with Intel Icc 7.0.
- Fix problems reading /proc/self/maps.
- Fix a couple of messages that should have been suppressed by -q,
but weren't.
- Make Addrcheck understand "Overlap" suppressions.
- At startup, check if program is statically linked and bail out if so.
- Cachegrind: Auto-detect Intel Pentium-M, also VIA Nehemiah
- Memcheck/addrcheck: minor speed optimisations
- Handle syscall __NR_brk more correctly than before.
- Fixed incorrect allocate/free mismatch errors when using
operator new(unsigned, std::nothrow_t const&)
operator new[](unsigned, std::nothrow_t const&)
- Support POSIX pthread spinlocks.
- Fixups for clean compilation with gcc-3.3.1.
- Implemented more opcodes:
- push %es
- push %ds
- pop %es
- pop %ds
- movntq
- sfence
- pshufw
- pavgb
- ucomiss
- enter
- mov imm32, %esp
- all "in" and "out" opcodes
- inc/dec %esp
- A whole bunch of SSE/SSE2 instructions
- Memcheck: don't bomb on SSE/SSE2 code.
Snapshot 20030725 (25 July 2003)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fixes some minor problems in 20030716.
- Fix bugs in overlap checking for strcpy/memcpy etc.
- Do overlap checking with Addrcheck as well as Memcheck.
- Fix this:
Memcheck: the `impossible' happened:
get_error_name: unexpected type
- Install headers needed to compile new skins.
- Remove leading spaces and colon in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH / LD_PRELOAD
passed to non-traced children.
- Fix file descriptor leak in valgrind-listener.
- Fix longstanding bug in which the allocation point of a
block resized by realloc was not correctly set. This may
have caused confusing error messages.
Snapshot 20030716 (16 July 2003)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
20030716 is a snapshot of our current CVS head (development) branch.
This is the branch which will become valgrind-2.0. It contains
significant enhancements over the 1.9.X branch.
Despite this being a snapshot of the CVS head, it is believed to be
quite stable -- at least as stable as 1.9.6 or 1.0.4, if not more so
-- and therefore suitable for widespread use. Please let us know asap
if it causes problems for you.
Two reasons for releasing a snapshot now are:
- It's been a while since 1.9.6, and this snapshot fixes
various problems that 1.9.6 has with threaded programs
on glibc-2.3.X based systems.
- So as to make available improvements in the 2.0 line.
Major changes in 20030716, as compared to 1.9.6:
- More fixes to threading support on glibc-2.3.1 and 2.3.2-based
systems (SuSE 8.2, Red Hat 9). If you have had problems
with inconsistent/illogical behaviour of errno, h_errno or the DNS
resolver functions in threaded programs, 20030716 should improve
matters. This snapshot seems stable enough to run OpenOffice.org
1.1rc on Red Hat 7.3, SuSE 8.2 and Red Hat 9, and that's a big
threaded app if ever I saw one.
- Automatic generation of suppression records; you no longer
need to write them by hand. Use --gen-suppressions=yes.
- strcpy/memcpy/etc check their arguments for overlaps, when
running with the Memcheck or Addrcheck skins.
- malloc_usable_size() is now supported.
- new client requests:
- VALGRIND_COUNT_ERRORS, VALGRIND_COUNT_LEAKS:
useful with regression testing
- VALGRIND_NON_SIMD_CALL[0123]: for running arbitrary functions
on real CPU (use with caution!)
- The GDB attach mechanism is more flexible. Allow the GDB to
be run to be specified by --gdb-path=/path/to/gdb, and specify
which file descriptor V will read its input from with
--input-fd=<number>.
- Cachegrind gives more accurate results (wasn't tracking instructions in
malloc() and friends previously, is now).
- Complete support for the MMX instruction set.
- Partial support for the SSE and SSE2 instruction sets. Work for this
is ongoing. About half the SSE/SSE2 instructions are done, so
some SSE based programs may work. Currently you need to specify
--skin=addrcheck. Basically not suitable for real use yet.
- Significant speedups (10%-20%) for standard memory checking.
- Fix assertion failure in pthread_once().
- Fix this:
valgrind: vg_intercept.c:598 (vgAllRoadsLeadToRome_select):
Assertion `ms_end >= ms_now' failed.
- Implement pthread_mutexattr_setpshared.
- Understand Pentium 4 branch hints. Also implemented a couple more
obscure x86 instructions.
- Lots of other minor bug fixes.
- We have a decent regression test system, for the first time.
This doesn't help you directly, but it does make it a lot easier
for us to track the quality of the system, especially across
multiple linux distributions.
You can run the regression tests with 'make regtest' after 'make
install' completes. On SuSE 8.2 and Red Hat 9 I get this:
== 84 tests, 0 stderr failures, 0 stdout failures ==
On Red Hat 8, I get this:
== 84 tests, 2 stderr failures, 1 stdout failure ==
corecheck/tests/res_search (stdout)
memcheck/tests/sigaltstack (stderr)
sigaltstack is probably harmless. res_search doesn't work
on R H 8 even running natively, so I'm not too worried.
On Red Hat 7.3, a glibc-2.2.5 system, I get these harmless failures:
== 84 tests, 2 stderr failures, 1 stdout failure ==
corecheck/tests/pth_atfork1 (stdout)
corecheck/tests/pth_atfork1 (stderr)
memcheck/tests/sigaltstack (stderr)
You need to run on a PII system, at least, since some tests
contain P6-specific instructions, and the test machine needs
access to the internet so that corecheck/tests/res_search
(a test that the DNS resolver works) can function.
As ever, thanks for the vast amount of feedback :) and bug reports :(
We may not answer all messages, but we do at least look at all of
them, and tend to fix the most frequently reported bugs.
Version 1.9.6 (7 May 2003 or thereabouts)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Major changes in 1.9.6:
- Improved threading support for glibc >= 2.3.2 (SuSE 8.2,
RedHat 9, to name but two ...) It turned out that 1.9.5
had problems with threading support on glibc >= 2.3.2,
usually manifested by threaded programs deadlocking in system calls,
or running unbelievably slowly. Hopefully these are fixed now. 1.9.6
is the first valgrind which gives reasonable support for
glibc-2.3.2. Also fixed a 2.3.2 problem with pthread_atfork().
- Majorly expanded FAQ.txt. We've added workarounds for all
common problems for which a workaround is known.
Minor changes in 1.9.6:
- Fix identification of the main thread's stack. Incorrect
identification of it was causing some on-stack addresses to not get
identified as such. This only affected the usefulness of some error
messages; the correctness of the checks made is unchanged.
- Support for kernels >= 2.5.68.
- Dummy implementations of __libc_current_sigrtmin,
__libc_current_sigrtmax and __libc_allocate_rtsig, hopefully
good enough to keep alive programs which previously died for lack of
them.
- Fix bug in the VALGRIND_DISCARD_TRANSLATIONS client request.
- Fix bug in the DWARF2 debug line info loader, when instructions
following each other have source lines far from each other
(e.g. with inlined functions).
- Debug info reading: read symbols from both "symtab" and "dynsym"
sections, rather than merely from the one that comes last in the
file.
- New syscall support: prctl(), creat(), lookup_dcookie().
- When checking calls to accept(), recvfrom(), getsocketopt(),
don't complain if buffer values are NULL.
- Try and avoid assertion failures in
mash_LD_PRELOAD_and_LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
- Minor bug fixes in cg_annotate.
Version 1.9.5 (7 April 2003)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It occurs to me that it would be helpful for valgrind users to record
in the source distribution the changes in each release. So I now
attempt to mend my errant ways :-) Changes in this and future releases
will be documented in the NEWS file in the source distribution.
Major changes in 1.9.5:
- (Critical bug fix): Fix a bug in the FPU simulation. This was
causing some floating point conditional tests not to work right.
Several people reported this. If you had floating point code which
didn't work right on 1.9.1 to 1.9.4, it's worth trying 1.9.5.
- Partial support for Red Hat 9. RH9 uses the new Native Posix
Threads Library (NPTL), instead of the older LinuxThreads.
This potentially causes problems with V which will take some
time to correct. In the meantime we have partially worked around
this, and so 1.9.5 works on RH9. Threaded programs still work,
but they may deadlock, because some system calls (accept, read,
write, etc) which should be nonblocking, in fact do block. This
is a known bug which we are looking into.
If you can, your best bet (unfortunately) is to avoid using
1.9.5 on a Red Hat 9 system, or on any NPTL-based distribution.
If your glibc is 2.3.1 or earlier, you're almost certainly OK.
Minor changes in 1.9.5:
- Added some #errors to valgrind.h to ensure people don't include
it accidentally in their sources. This is a change from 1.0.X
which was never properly documented. The right thing to include
is now memcheck.h. Some people reported problems and strange
behaviour when (incorrectly) including valgrind.h in code with
1.9.1 -- 1.9.4. This is no longer possible.
- Add some __extension__ bits and pieces so that gcc configured
for valgrind-checking compiles even with -Werror. If you
don't understand this, ignore it. Of interest to gcc developers
only.
- Removed a pointless check which caused problems interworking
with Clearcase. V would complain about shared objects whose
names did not end ".so", and refuse to run. This is now fixed.
In fact it was fixed in 1.9.4 but not documented.
- Fixed a bug causing an assertion failure of "waiters == 1"
somewhere in vg_scheduler.c, when running large threaded apps,
notably MySQL.
- Add support for the munlock system call (124).
Some comments about future releases:
1.9.5 is, we hope, the most stable Valgrind so far. It pretty much
supersedes the 1.0.X branch. If you are a valgrind packager, please
consider making 1.9.5 available to your users. You can regard the
1.0.X branch as obsolete: 1.9.5 is stable and vastly superior. There
are no plans at all for further releases of the 1.0.X branch.
If you want a leading-edge valgrind, consider building the cvs head
(from SourceForge), or getting a snapshot of it. Current cool stuff
going in includes MMX support (done); SSE/SSE2 support (in progress),
a significant (10-20%) performance improvement (done), and the usual
large collection of minor changes. Hopefully we will be able to
improve our NPTL support, but no promises.