Freeradius and memory usage part deux

[Alan DeKok]

Roy Kartadinata wrote:
> 1. Our radius servers are having some memory issue where its memory
> usage would increase by 1% every 30 - 45 minutes until it crashes and
> restarts.
> 
> 2. I created a script that will temporarily fix the issue by monitoring
> its memory usage and restart after it reaches the threshold.

  You can also use "monit".  The latest version from SVN has a RADIUS
plugin.

> 3. Changed detail log configuration so that it creates a new one every
> hour but memory usage still increasing but at a slower rate.

  Hmm... I'm not sure why that would change anything.

> 4. Upgraded to 2.1.6 from 2.1.5 but the problem still exist. I recently
> tested the latest 2.1.8 as well but still have the same issue.

  That's not nice.

> We also have a simple perl module script that takes IMSI passes by our
> PDSN and checks it against the username. I did ran valgrind yesterday
> and the output is below:
...
> ==17709== 5 bytes in 1 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 1 of 36

  That shouldn't be anything to worry about.  i.e. the problem is likely
elsewhere.

> ==17709== LEAK SUMMARY:
> ==17709==    definitely lost: 5 bytes in 1 blocks.
> ==17709==      possibly lost: 0 bytes in 0 blocks.
> ==17709==    still reachable: 3,013,610 bytes in 35,590 blocks.

  Run "radiusd -m" to have it clean up memory on exit.

> I hope those information helps. We also have two freeradius servers in
> our remote datacenter still running 2.1.2 without any issue but I don't
> see a point rolling back to the older version so hopefully we can fix
> this issue with the current version if possible.

  If 2.1.2 doesn't have the issue, then it should be straightforward to
track the problem down.  Find a simple configuration that reproduces the
problem (ideally one that can be run on a stand-alone system), and post
it.  The "git bisect" command will track the problem down very quicjly.