Memory leak on reload

[Alan DeKok]

Derek Chee wrote:
> I have a FreeRADIUS 2.1.9 installation (compiled from source) running on Solaris 10 Sparc and I've run into a memory leak issue when reloading the configuration with a HUP signal.  I have a very simple RADIUS setup with just an authorize and a users file.  The users file is rather large at 41MB and over 110,000 records, but I've noticed that problem with the default empty users file, too.
> 
> Starting up FreeRADIUS with -X, waiting until FreeRADIUS says "Ready to process requests." and checking the memory usage, I get this:
...
> Eventually the radiusd process takes up all of the memory on the system and the system grinds to a halt.
> 
> Does anybody have any suggestions on what might be causing this and how to fix it?

  It's not a memory leak.  The server keeps the old configuration around
for a while after a HUP.  This is because a request might still be in
the middle of being processed, and therefore is using the old configuration.

  If you wait at least 60 seconds between HUPs, the old "users" file
configuration will be freed.  There will still, however, be portions of
the configuration that *cannot* be free'd without drastic changes to the
server core.

  i.e. The server will user a small amount of additional memory on every
HUP.

  If this is a problem, then patches are welcome.

  Alan DeKok.