Valgrind User Manual

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. An Overview of Valgrind

1.2. How to navigate this manual

2. Using and understanding the Valgrind core

2.1. What Valgrind does with your program

2.2. Getting started

2.3. The Commentary

2.4. Reporting of errors

2.5. Suppressing errors

2.6. Command-line flags for the Valgrind core

2.6.1. Tool-selection option

2.6.2. Basic Options

2.6.3. Error-related options

2.6.4. malloc()-related Options

2.6.5. Uncommon Options

2.6.6. Debugging Valgrind Options

2.6.7. Setting default Options

2.7. The Client Request mechanism

2.8. Support for Threads

2.9. Handling of Signals

2.10. Function wrapping

2.10.1. A Simple Example

2.10.2. Wrapping Specifications

2.10.3. Wrapping Semantics

2.10.4. Debugging

2.10.5. Limitations - control flow

2.10.6. Limitations - original function signatures

2.10.7. Examples

2.11. Building and Installing

2.12. If You Have Problems

2.13. Limitations

2.14. An Example Run

2.15. Warning Messages You Might See

2.16. Debugging MPI Parallel Programs with Valgrind

2.16.1. Building and installing the wrappers

2.16.2. Getting started

2.16.3. Controlling the wrapper library

2.16.4. Abilities and limitations

2.16.5. Writing new wrappers

2.16.6. What to expect when using the wrappers

3. Memcheck: a heavyweight memory checker

3.1. Kinds of bugs that Memcheck can find

3.2. Command-line flags specific to Memcheck

3.3. Explanation of error messages from Memcheck

3.3.1. Illegal read / Illegal write errors

3.3.2. Use of uninitialised values

3.3.3. Illegal frees

3.3.4. When a block is freed with an inappropriate deallocation function

3.3.5. Passing system call parameters with inadequate read/write permissions

3.3.6. Overlapping source and destination blocks

3.3.7. Memory leak detection

3.4. Writing suppression files

3.5. Details of Memcheck's checking machinery

3.5.1. Valid-value (V) bits

3.5.2. Valid-address (A) bits

3.5.3. Putting it all together

3.6. Client Requests

4. Cachegrind: a cache profiler

4.1. Cache profiling

4.1.1. Overview

4.1.2. Cache simulation specifics

4.2. Profiling programs

4.2.1. Output file

4.2.2. Cachegrind options

4.2.3. Annotating C/C++ programs

4.2.4. Annotating assembler programs

4.3. cg_annotate options

4.3.1. Warnings

4.3.2. Things to watch out for

4.3.3. Accuracy

4.3.4. Todo

5. Callgrind: a heavyweight profiler

5.1. Overview

5.2. Purpose

5.2.1. Profiling as part of Application Development

5.2.2. Profiling Tools

5.3. Usage

5.3.1. Basics

5.3.2. Multiple profiling dumps from one program run

5.3.3. Limiting the range of collected events

5.3.4. Avoiding cycles

5.4. Command line option reference

5.4.1. Miscellaneous options

5.4.2. Dump creation options

5.4.3. Activity options

5.4.4. Data collection options

5.4.5. Cost entity separation options

5.4.6. Cache simulation options

6. Massif: a heap profiler

6.1. Heap profiling

6.1.1. Why Use a Heap Profiler?

6.2. Using Massif

6.2.1. Overview

6.2.2. Basic Results of Profiling

6.2.3. Spacetime Graphs

6.3. Details of Heap Allocations

6.3.1. Accuracy

6.4. Massif Options

7. Helgrind: a data-race detector

7.1. Data Races

7.2. What Helgrind Does

7.3. Helgrind Options

8. Nulgrind: the "null" tool

9. Lackey: a simple profiler and memory tracer

9.1. Overview

9.2. Lackey Options