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research-article

Tolerating memory leaks

Authors:

Michael D. Bond,

Kathryn S. McKinleyAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 43, Issue 10

Pages 109 - 126

https://doi.org/10.1145/1449955.1449774

Published: 19 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Type safety and garbage collection in managed languages eliminate memory errors such as dangling pointers, double frees, and leaks of unreachable objects. Unfortunately, a program still leaks memory if it maintains references to objects it will never use again. Leaked objects decrease program locality and increase garbage collection frequency and workload. A growing leak will eventually exhaust memory and crash the program.

This paper introduces a leak tolerance approach called Melt that safely eliminates performance degradations and crashes due to leaks of dead but reachable objects in managed languages, given sufficient disk space to hold leaking objects. Melt (1) identifies stale objects that the program is not accessing; (2) segregates in-use and stale objects by storing stale objects to disk; and (3) preserves safety by activating stale objects if the program subsequently accesses them. We design and build a prototype implementation of Melt in a Java VM and show it adds overhead low enough for production systems. Whereas existing VMs grind to a halt and then crash on programs with leaks, Melt keeps many of these programs running much longer without significantly degrading performance. Melt provides users the illusion of a fixed leak and gives developers more time to fix leaky programs.

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Yang AÖsterlund EWrigstad TDonaldson ATorlak E(2020)Improving program locality in the GC using hotnessProceedings of the 41st ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3385412.3385977(301-313)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3385412.3385977
Yang AÖsterlund EWilhelmsson JNyblom HWrigstad TDing CMaas M(2020)ThinGC: complete isolation with marginal overheadProceedings of the 2020 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on Memory Management10.1145/3381898.3397213(74-86)Online publication date: 16-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3381898.3397213
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Index Terms

Tolerating memory leaks
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development techniques
      1. Error handling and recovery

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 43, Issue 10

September 2008

613 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/1449955

Issue’s Table of Contents

OOPSLA '08: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems languages and applications
October 2008
654 pages
ISBN:9781605582153
DOI:10.1145/1449764
General Chair:
Gail E. Harris
Instantiated Software Inc.
,
Program Chairs:
Gregor Kiczales
University of British Columbia
,
Dirk Riehle
SAP Research
,
Andrew P. Black
Portland State University

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 19 October 2008

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 43, Issue 10

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Cited By

Blanco ACórdova ABergel AAlcocer J(2024)Asking and Answering Questions During Memory ProfilingIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2024.337712750:5(1096-1117)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2024.3377127
Yang AÖsterlund EWrigstad TDonaldson ATorlak E(2020)Improving program locality in the GC using hotnessProceedings of the 41st ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3385412.3385977(301-313)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3385412.3385977
Yang AÖsterlund EWilhelmsson JNyblom HWrigstad TDing CMaas M(2020)ThinGC: complete isolation with marginal overheadProceedings of the 2020 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on Memory Management10.1145/3381898.3397213(74-86)Online publication date: 16-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3381898.3397213
Amalfitano DRiccio VTramontana PFasolino A(2020)Do Memories Haunt You? An Automated Black Box Testing Approach for Detecting Memory Leaks in Android AppsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.29665228(12217-12231)Online publication date: 2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2966522
Wang FShi XLu XLima SRocha Á(2018)A low-overhead and efficient Java object profiler on ART virtual machineJournal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems: Applications in Engineering and Technology10.3233/JIFS-16965535:3(2997-3009)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3233/JIFS-169655
YU QJIANG SLIU Y(2015)A Detection and Measurement Approach for Memory Leaked Objects in Java ProgramsIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7320E98.D:5(1053-1061)Online publication date: 2015
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7320
Jia RAbdelwahed SErradi A(2015)A Predictive Control Approach for Fault Management of Computing SystemsACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review10.1145/2847220.284722543:3(16-20)Online publication date: 19-Nov-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2847220.2847225
Jia RAbdelwahed SErradi A(2015)Towards Proactive Fault Management of Enterprise SystemsProceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Cloud and Autonomic Computing10.1109/ICCAC.2015.18(21-32)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2015
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Joy MMueller WRammig F(2014)Source Code Annotated Memory Leak Detection for Soft Real Time Embedded Systems with Resource ConstraintsProceedings of the 2014 IEEE 12th International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing10.1109/DASC.2014.38(166-172)Online publication date: 24-Aug-2014
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Vitásek MBinder WHauswirth MFreund SPăsăreanu C(2013)ShadowDataProceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT Workshop on Program Analysis for Software Tools and Engineering10.1145/2462029.2462032(17-24)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2013
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