Linux Application Memory Errors Automated Testing

As far as a C/C++ programmer is concerned, memory error is a common and at the same time extremely difficult problem. C/C++ language and its library are essentially not safe. The manual allocation and management of dynamic memory would easily bring out memory error in the program. In the software systems using dynamic memory, 50% of the software errors are connected with memory management. The common errors include memory leak, memory-access errors, repeated free memory, null pointer reference, and so on. These errors would lead to the ineffectiveness and even the collapse of systems, thus greatly affecting the reliability of the system.This dissertation focuses on the research subject of how to automatically detect whether the Linux application program has memory errors or not. The memory allocation and release principle of C/C++ will first be investigated minutely and then further study will be made on some commonly used detection tool of memory errors and their usage. At last, based on the error detection tools, automatic testing system of memory errors would be developed. The main content of this dissertation includes the following aspects:1.The research of memory allocation and release principle of memory concerning C/C++ program stack, as well as common errors and harm related with memory usage.2. Study and comparison of major error detection tools—Purify and Valgrind. More attention would be paid to the detecting efficiency of Valgrind on all kinds of memory errors, and Valgrind would finally be selected as the supporting tool for automatically testing memory errors.3.Based on the detection report of memory errors on Valgrind, studies are made on how to automatically test and verify memory errors by applying the tool of Valgrind and the system for automatically detecting and verifying memory errors based on the tool of Valgrind will be developed finally.