xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/memguard.9 (revision 0e1497aefd602cea581d2380d22e67dfdcac6b4e)
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd August 2, 2010
28.Dt MEMGUARD 9
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm MemGuard
32.Nd "memory allocator for debugging purposes"
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34.Cd "options DEBUG_MEMGUARD"
35.Sh DESCRIPTION
36.Nm
37is a simple and small replacement memory allocator designed
38to help detect tamper-after-free scenarios.
39These problems are more and more common and likely with
40multithreaded kernels where race conditions are more prevalent.
41.Pp
42Currently,
43.Nm
44can take over
45.Fn malloc ,
46.Fn realloc
47and
48.Fn free
49for a single malloc type.
50.Nm
51can also guard all allocations larger than
52.Dv PAGE_SIZE ,
53and can guard a random fraction of all allocations.
54There is also a knob to prevent allocations smaller than a specified
55size from being guarded, to limit memory waste.
56.Sh EXAMPLES
57To use
58.Nm
59for a memory type, either add an entry to
60.Pa /boot/loader.conf :
61.Bd -literal -offset indent
62vm.memguard.desc=<memory_type>
63.Ed
64.Pp
65Or set the
66.Va vm.memguard.desc
67.Xr sysctl 8
68variable at run-time:
69.Bd -literal -offset indent
70sysctl vm.memguard.desc=<memory_type>
71.Ed
72.Pp
73Where
74.Ar memory_type
75is a short description of the memory type to monitor.
76Only allocations from that
77.Ar memory_type
78made after
79.Va vm.memguard.desc
80is set will potentially be guarded.
81If
82.Va vm.memguard.desc
83is modified at run-time then only allocations of the new
84.Ar memory_type
85will potentially be guarded once the
86.Xr sysctl 8
87is set.
88Existing guarded allocations will still be properly released by
89.Xr free 9 .
90.Pp
91The short description of a
92.Xr malloc 9
93type is the second argument to
94.Xr MALLOC_DEFINE 9 ,
95so one has to find it in the kernel source.
96.Pp
97The
98.Va vm.memguard.divisor
99boot-time tunable is used to scale how much of the system's physical
100memory
101.Nm
102is allowed to consume.
103The default is 10, so up to
104.Va cnt.v_page_count Ns /10
105pages can be used.
106.Nm
107will reserve
108.Va vm_kmem_max
109/
110.Va vm.memguard.divisor
111bytes of virtual address space, limited by twice the physical memory
112size.
113The physical limit is reported as
114.Va vm.memguard.phys_limit
115and the virtual space reserved for
116.Nm
117is reported as
118.Va vm.memguard.mapsize .
119.Pp
120.Nm
121will not do page promotions for any allocation smaller than
122.Va vm.memguard.minsize
123bytes.
124The default is 0, meaning all allocations can potentially be guarded.
125.Nm
126can guard sufficiently large allocations randomly, with average
127frequency of every one in 100000 /
128.Va vm.memguard.frequency
129allocations.
130The default is 0, meaning no allocations are randomly guarded.
131.Pp
132.Nm
133can optionally add unmapped guard pages around each allocation to
134detect overflow and underflow, if
135.Va vm.memguard.options
136has the 1 bit set.
137This option is enabled by default.
138.Nm
139will optionally guard all allocations of
140.Dv PAGE_SIZE
141or larger if
142.Va vm.memguard.options
143has the 2 bit set.
144This option is off by default.
145.Sh SEE ALSO
146.Xr sysctl 8 ,
147.Xr vmstat 8 ,
148.Xr contigmalloc 9 ,
149.Xr malloc 9 ,
150.Xr redzone 9
151.Sh HISTORY
152.Nm
153first appeared in
154.Fx 6.0 .
155.Sh AUTHORS
156.An -nosplit
157.Nm
158was originally written by
159.An Bosko Milekic Aq bmilekic@FreeBSD.org .
160This manual page was originally written by
161.An Christian Brueffer Aq brueffer@FreeBSD.org .
162Additions have been made by
163.An Matthew Fleming Aq mdf@FreeBSD.org
164to both the implementation and the documentation.
165.Sh BUGS
166Currently, it is not possible to override UMA
167.Xr zone 9
168allocations.
169