Month: November 2017

Test of freeing 2-dimension vector memory in C++

C++ Vector Memory Release introduces how to release vector memory in C++, but the example only involves 1-dimension vector. I write a small application to verify freeing 2-dimension vector (the OS is OpenBSD) :

#include <unistd.h>
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main(void) {
    vector<vector<char>> vec(1024 * 1024, vector<char>(1024));

    cout << "Before freeing memory, sleep 30 seconds ..." << endl;
    sleep(30);
    vector<vector<char>>().swap(vec);

    cout << "Sleep now ..." << endl;
    sleep(300);
    return 0;
}

Use clang++ to build and run it:

# clang++ -std=c++11 free.cpp
# ./a.out

(1) When “Before freeing memory, sleep 30 seconds ...” is printed, checked the memory usage of program:

1

We can see the program occupied more than 1G memory.

(2) After “Sleep now ...” is outputted, the memory usage began to descend, and when it became stable, the memory program consumed is only about 19K:

2

P.S., the full code is here.

Be careful of FHEcontext’s shallow copy feature in HElib

Check following code which uses HElib:

class A
{
    FHEcontext context;
public:
    FHEcontext& getContext()
    {
        return context;
    }
};

void func()
{
    auto context = a.getContext();
    ......
}

A a;

int main(void)
{
    ......
    func();
    ......
    return 0;
}

In func():

......
auto context = a.getContext();
......

It will allocate a local variable context whose type is FHEcontext, not “FHEcontext&“, and the point is it will be shallow copy of FHEcontext:

class FHEcontext {

......
  //! @breif A default EncryptedArray
  const EncryptedArray* ea;
......
}

FHEcontext::~FHEcontext()
{
  delete ea;
}

So when the local variable context is destroyed, the memory of ea is also released; this will lead to context member of class A references a already freed memory. That will be a disaster!

References:
auto specifier type deduction for references;
The issue about FHEcontext’s copy constructor/assignment operator.

 

Enable generating core dump file on Debian Linux

The default core dump file size is 0 on Debian Linux:

$ ulimit -c
0

To enable generating core dump file, I need to run following command:

$ ulimit -c unlimited

But if you re-login, the core dump file size is changed back to 0 from unlimited. So “ulimit -c unlimited” need to be executed during your login. E.g., if you use zsh, append it in .zshrc file.