xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/memguard.9 (revision 7bd6fde3)
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd January 31, 2006
28.Dt MEMGUARD 9
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm MemGuard
32.Nd "memory allocator for debugging purposes"
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34.Cd "options DEBUG_MEMGUARD"
35.Sh DESCRIPTION
36.Nm
37is a simple and small replacement memory allocator designed
38to help detect tamper-after-free scenarios.
39These problems are more and more common and likely with
40multithreaded kernels where race conditions are more prevalent.
41.Pp
42Currently,
43.Nm
44can only take over
45.Fn malloc ,
46.Fn realloc
47and
48.Fn free
49for a particular malloc type.
50.Sh EXAMPLES
51To use
52.Nm
53for memory type compiled into the kernel, one has to add the
54following line to the
55.Pa /boot/loader.conf :
56.Bd -literal -offset indent
57vm.memguard.desc=<memory_type>
58.Ed
59.Pp
60Where
61.Ar memory_type
62is a short description of memory type to monitor.
63The short description of memory type is the second argument to
64.Xr MALLOC_DEFINE 9 ,
65so one has to find it in the kernel source.
66.Pp
67To use
68.Nm
69for memory type defined in a kernel module, one has to set
70.Va vm.memguard.desc
71.Xr sysctl 8
72variable before loading the module:
73.Bd -literal -offset indent
74sysctl vm.memguard.desc=<memory_type>
75.Ed
76.Pp
77The
78.Va vm.memguard.divisor
79boot-time tunable is used to scale how much of
80.Va kmem_map
81one wants to allocate for
82.Nm .
83The default is 10, so
84.Va kmem_size Ns /10
85bytes will be used.
86The
87.Va kmem_size
88value can be obtained via the
89.Va vm.kmem_size
90.Xr sysctl 8
91variable.
92.Sh SEE ALSO
93.Xr sysctl 8 ,
94.Xr vmstat 8 ,
95.Xr contigmalloc 9 ,
96.Xr malloc 9 ,
97.Xr redzone 9
98.Sh HISTORY
99.Nm
100first appeared in
101.Fx 6.0 .
102.Sh AUTHORS
103.An -nosplit
104.Nm
105was written by
106.An Bosko Milekic Aq bmilekic@FreeBSD.org .
107This manual page was written by
108.An Christian Brueffer Aq brueffer@FreeBSD.org .
109.Sh BUGS
110Currently, it is not possible to override UMA
111.Xr zone 9
112allocations.
113