Valgrind User Manual

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. An Overview of Valgrind

1.2. How to navigate this manual

2. Using and understanding the Valgrind core

2.1. What Valgrind does with your program

2.2. Getting started

2.3. The Commentary

2.4. Reporting of errors

2.5. Suppressing errors

2.6. Core Command-line Options

2.6.1. Tool-selection Option

2.6.2. Basic Options

2.6.3. Error-related Options

2.6.4. malloc-related Options

2.6.5. Uncommon Options

2.6.6. Debugging Options

2.6.7. Setting Default Options

2.7. Support for Threads

2.8. Handling of Signals

2.9. Building and Installing Valgrind

2.10. If You Have Problems

2.11. Limitations

2.12. An Example Run

2.13. Warning Messages You Might See

3. Using and understanding the Valgrind core: Advanced Topics

3.1. The Client Request mechanism

3.2. Function wrapping

3.2.1. A Simple Example

3.2.2. Wrapping Specifications

3.2.3. Wrapping Semantics

3.2.4. Debugging

3.2.5. Limitations - control flow

3.2.6. Limitations - original function signatures

3.2.7. Examples

4. Memcheck: a memory error detector

4.1. Overview

4.2. Explanation of error messages from Memcheck

4.2.1. Illegal read / Illegal write errors

4.2.2. Use of uninitialised values

4.2.3. Use of uninitialised or unaddressable values in system calls

4.2.4. Illegal frees

4.2.5. When a heap block is freed with an inappropriate deallocation function

4.2.6. Overlapping source and destination blocks

4.2.7. Memory leak detection

4.3. Memcheck Command-Line Options

4.4. Writing suppression files

4.5. Details of Memcheck's checking machinery

4.5.1. Valid-value (V) bits

4.5.2. Valid-address (A) bits

4.5.3. Putting it all together

4.6. Client Requests

4.7. Memory Pools: describing and working with custom allocators

4.8. Debugging MPI Parallel Programs with Valgrind

4.8.1. Building and installing the wrappers

4.8.2. Getting started

4.8.3. Controlling the wrapper library

4.8.4. Functions

4.8.5. Types

4.8.6. Writing new wrappers

4.8.7. What to expect when using the wrappers

5. Cachegrind: a cache and branch-prediction profiler

5.1. Overview

5.2. Using Cachegrind, cg_annotate and cg_merge

5.2.1. Running Cachegrind

5.2.2. Output File

5.2.3. Running cg_annotate

5.2.4. The Output Preamble

5.2.5. The Global and Function-level Counts

5.2.6. Line-by-line Counts

5.2.7. Annotating Assembly Code Programs

5.2.8. Forking Programs

5.2.9. cg_annotate Warnings

5.2.10. Unusual Annotation Cases

5.2.11. Merging Profiles with cg_merge

5.2.12. Differencing Profiles with cg_diff

5.3. Cachegrind Command-line Options

5.4. cg_annotate Command-line Options

5.5. cg_diff Command-line Options

5.6. Acting on Cachegrind's Information

5.7. Simulation Details

5.7.1. Cache Simulation Specifics

5.7.2. Branch Simulation Specifics

5.7.3. Accuracy

5.8. Implementation Details

5.8.1. How Cachegrind Works

5.8.2. Cachegrind Output File Format

6. Callgrind: a call-graph generating cache and branch prediction profiler

6.1. Overview

6.1.1. Functionality

6.1.2. Basic Usage

6.2. Advanced Usage

6.2.1. Multiple profiling dumps from one program run

6.2.2. Limiting the range of collected events

6.2.3. Counting global bus events

6.2.4. Avoiding cycles

6.2.5. Forking Programs

6.3. Callgrind Command-line Options

6.3.1. Dump creation options

6.3.2. Activity options

6.3.3. Data collection options

6.3.4. Cost entity separation options

6.3.5. Simulation options

6.3.6. Cache simulation options

6.4. Callgrind specific client requests

6.5. callgrind_annotate Command-line Options

6.6. callgrind_control Command-line Options

7. Helgrind: a thread error detector

7.1. Overview

7.2. Detected errors: Misuses of the POSIX pthreads API

7.3. Detected errors: Inconsistent Lock Orderings

7.4. Detected errors: Data Races

7.4.1. A Simple Data Race

7.4.2. Helgrind's Race Detection Algorithm

7.4.3. Interpreting Race Error Messages

7.5. Hints and Tips for Effective Use of Helgrind

7.6. Helgrind Command-line Options

7.7. Helgrind Client Requests

7.8. A To-Do List for Helgrind

8. DRD: a thread error detector

8.1. Overview

8.1.1. Multithreaded Programming Paradigms

8.1.2. POSIX Threads Programming Model

8.1.3. Multithreaded Programming Problems

8.1.4. Data Race Detection

8.2. Using DRD

8.2.1. DRD Command-line Options

8.2.2. Detected Errors: Data Races

8.2.3. Detected Errors: Lock Contention

8.2.4. Detected Errors: Misuse of the POSIX threads API

8.2.5. Client Requests

8.2.6. Debugging GNOME Programs

8.2.7. Debugging Qt Programs

8.2.8. Debugging Boost.Thread Programs

8.2.9. Debugging OpenMP Programs

8.2.10. DRD and Custom Memory Allocators

8.2.11. DRD Versus Memcheck

8.2.12. Resource Requirements

8.2.13. Hints and Tips for Effective Use of DRD

8.3. Using the POSIX Threads API Effectively

8.3.1. Mutex types

8.3.2. Condition variables

8.3.3. pthread_cond_timedwait and timeouts

8.4. Limitations

8.5. Feedback

9. Massif: a heap profiler

9.1. Overview

9.2. Using Massif and ms_print

9.2.1. An Example Program

9.2.2. Running Massif

9.2.3. Running ms_print

9.2.4. The Output Preamble

9.2.5. The Output Graph

9.2.6. The Snapshot Details

9.2.7. Forking Programs

9.2.8. Measuring All Memory in a Process

9.2.9. Acting on Massif's Information

9.3. Massif Command-line Options

9.4. Massif Client Requests

9.5. ms_print Command-line Options

9.6. Massif's Output File Format

10. DHAT: a dynamic heap analysis tool

10.1. Overview

10.2. Understanding DHAT's output

10.2.1. Interpreting the max-live, tot-alloc and deaths fields

10.2.2. Interpreting the acc-ratios fields

10.2.3. Interpreting "Aggregated access counts by offset" data

10.3. DHAT Command-line Options

11. Ptrcheck: an experimental heap, stack and global array overrun detector

11.1. Overview

11.2. Ptrcheck Command-line Options

11.3. How Ptrcheck Works: Heap Checks

11.4. How Ptrcheck Works: Stack and Global Checks

11.5. Comparison with Memcheck

11.6. Limitations

11.7. Still To Do: User-visible Functionality

11.8. Still To Do: Implementation Tidying

12. BBV: an experimental basic block vector generation tool

12.1. Overview

12.2. Using Basic Block Vectors to create SimPoints

12.3. BBV Command-line Options

12.4. Basic Block Vector File Format

12.5. Implementation

12.6. Threaded Executable Support

12.7. Validation

12.8. Performance

13. Lackey: an example tool

13.1. Overview

13.2. Lackey Command-line Options

14. Nulgrind: the minimal Valgrind tool

14.1. Overview