[lug] Memory Leak Detection

[D. Stimits]

...
> After much testing, we can only cause the failure to occur
> maybe once every two weeks. In talking it over, we are
> wondering if this failure is related to the failures that we
> were getting before we expanded the memory. More
> specifically, we're wondering if there is a memory leak
> somewhere in the code.
> 
> My question is, how would we go about doing a test for a
> memory leak in this situation?

I think specific tools might depend on the language it's written in. For 
C you could maybe use Valgrind (http://valgrind.org), and there are some 
similar libs out there for memory debugging.

One thing I've noticed about memory failures is that sometimes marginal 
ram will work for several weeks then fail. Adding more memory and 
placing it in the lower memory slot can shift the location of the bad 
memory and reduce how often the problem is seen. Would memtest86 work on 
a PC104?

D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net