Writing Device Drivers

Detecting Kernel Memory Leaks

The ::findleaks dcmd provides powerful, efficient detection of memory leaks in kernel crash dumps. The full set of kernel-memory debugging features must be enabled for ::findleaks to be effective. For more information, see Setting kmem_flags Debugging Flags. Run ::findleaks during driver development and testing to detect code that leaks memory, thus wasting kernel resources. See Chapter 9, Debugging With the Kernel Memory Allocator, in Oracle Solaris Modular Debugger Guide for a complete discussion of ::findleaks.


Note –

Code that leaks kernel memory can render the system vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks.