Memory leak in OpenFOAM?

marupio · September 21, 2010, 10:52

It looks like OpenFOAM has a memory leak.

I ran scalarTransportFoam on the swirlTest tutorial, set the timestep to 0.1, end time to 1000, write interval 1. As it ran I watched the process monitor. Memory use climbed slowly and steadily from 400 mb to 500 mb before I finally stopped the simulation. Why would this be?

This happened on an old revision of 1.5-dev, as well as 1.6. I don't have 1.7 installed yet.

I started looking into this because my custom solver seems to have a bad case of the memory leaks.

Any ideas?

marupio · September 21, 2010, 13:37

I have confirmed this is a legitimate memory leak. It is case directory dependent - I can only duplicate it using the old swirlTest tutorial from OpenFOAM-1.5. (It doesn't happen for pitzDaily.)

I have isolated it to:
runTime.write();

Enjoy!

l_r_mcglashan · September 22, 2010, 05:25

Did you try running it through valgrind? If your OF is compiled for debugging it will even tell you the offending code lines:

valgrind --tool=memcheck --leak-check=yes scalarTransportFoam

l_r_mcglashan · September 22, 2010, 05:34

So scalarTransportFoam on pitzDaily is fine. There appears to be a small leak in bubbleFoam however.

deepsterblue · September 22, 2010, 10:11

Interesting. Since you mention that you've isolated the problem to runTime.write(), I'm curious to see whether the leak depends on the write mode (ascii/binary) and/or precision.

marupio · September 22, 2010, 10:35

It might not be present in OF1.7.x - Henry ran my test case and valgrind reported nothing for him.

It's just the old swirlTest tutorial from 1.5... if no one else can duplicate it, it's my machine.

I also found the source of the (big) leak in my custom solver - you can't use a single fvMeshSubset object to produce more than one submesh, or else you lose a mesh-sized chunk of memory.

mattijs · September 28, 2010, 10:15

We've finally got a proper bug reporting system :-)
Please report any OpenFOAM bugs on http://www.openfoam.com/bugs.

Thanks,

Mattijs

marupio · September 28, 2010, 12:37

Yes I have been informed, and am now registered with Mantis. We should put a sticky announcement at the top of this forum.

bruxellois · October 14, 2010, 13:49

Hi,

Could you help me please?

check this if you dont mind.

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...litiy-how.html

Thanks in advance.

Regards.

September 21, 2010, 10:52	Memory leak in OpenFOAM?	#1
marupio Senior Member David Gaden Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Winnipeg, Canada Posts: 437 Rep Power: 22	It looks like OpenFOAM has a memory leak. I ran scalarTransportFoam on the swirlTest tutorial, set the timestep to 0.1, end time to 1000, write interval 1. As it ran I watched the process monitor. Memory use climbed slowly and steadily from 400 mb to 500 mb before I finally stopped the simulation. Why would this be? This happened on an old revision of 1.5-dev, as well as 1.6. I don't have 1.7 installed yet. I started looking into this because my custom solver seems to have a bad case of the memory leaks. Any ideas?

September 22, 2010, 05:25		#3
l_r_mcglashan Senior Member Laurence R. McGlashan Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 370 Rep Power: 23	Did you try running it through valgrind? If your OF is compiled for debugging it will even tell you the offending code lines: valgrind --tool=memcheck --leak-check=yes scalarTransportFoam __________________ Laurence R. McGlashan :: Website

September 22, 2010, 05:34		#4
l_r_mcglashan Senior Member Laurence R. McGlashan Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 370 Rep Power: 23	So scalarTransportFoam on pitzDaily is fine. There appears to be a small leak in bubbleFoam however. __________________ Laurence R. McGlashan :: Website

September 22, 2010, 10:11		#5
deepsterblue Senior Member Sandeep Menon Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Amherst, MA Posts: 403 Rep Power: 25	Interesting. Since you mention that you've isolated the problem to runTime.write(), I'm curious to see whether the leak depends on the write mode (ascii/binary) and/or precision. __________________ Sandeep Menon University of Massachusetts Amherst https://github.com/smenon

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September 21, 2010, 13:37		#2
marupio Senior Member David Gaden Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Winnipeg, Canada Posts: 437 Rep Power: 22	I have confirmed this is a legitimate memory leak. It is case directory dependent - I can only duplicate it using the old swirlTest tutorial from OpenFOAM-1.5. (It doesn't happen for pitzDaily.) I have isolated it to: runTime.write(); Enjoy!

September 22, 2010, 10:35		#6
marupio Senior Member David Gaden Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Winnipeg, Canada Posts: 437 Rep Power: 22	It might not be present in OF1.7.x - Henry ran my test case and valgrind reported nothing for him. It's just the old swirlTest tutorial from 1.5... if no one else can duplicate it, it's my machine. I also found the source of the (big) leak in my custom solver - you can't use a single fvMeshSubset object to produce more than one submesh, or else you lose a mesh-sized chunk of memory.

September 28, 2010, 10:15		#7
mattijs Senior Member Mattijs Janssens Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 1,419 Rep Power: 26	We've finally got a proper bug reporting system :-) Please report any OpenFOAM bugs on http://www.openfoam.com/bugs. Thanks, Mattijs

September 28, 2010, 12:37		#8
marupio Senior Member David Gaden Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Winnipeg, Canada Posts: 437 Rep Power: 22	Yes I have been informed, and am now registered with Mantis. We should put a sticky announcement at the top of this forum.

October 14, 2010, 13:49		#9
bruxellois Member Alex Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 33 Rep Power: 16	Hi, Could you help me please? check this if you dont mind. http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...litiy-how.html Thanks in advance. Regards.