SIGSEGV in R_RunWeakRefFinalizer, object allocated with Rcpp
Hi I?aki, I think that "still reachable" memory is potentially a problem only if you cared about (frequent) package unloading, and if package unloading did not have correctness problems in the first place. I would only worry about "memory leaks" reported by valgrind. That your example (unloading a library while there is still an object with a finalizer implemented in that library) segfaults on one system but not another is not too surprising. Depending on the OS, the dynamic linker, the current state of the system, etc - when the GC tries to run the finalizer, it may point to inaccessible memory (segfault), but also still to the code of the unloaded finalizer (possibly no segfault) or something else. There is no way to distinguish between all these cases before running the finalizer - neither the OS nor R can do it - we could only in principle, with a lot of other problems and platform-dependent hacks, detect when the memory is inaccessible, but that may not be worth it. Best Tomas
On 08/10/2018 12:46 AM, I?aki ?car wrote:
Thanks, Tomas, Luke, for the clarifications. Then, I have another question.
But first, let me introduce how I ended up here, because obviously I
just don't go around dyn.unloading things that I've just compiled. I
was testing a package with valgrind. Everything ok, no leaks. Great.
But I'm always suspicious (probably unjustifiably) of all the memory
that is reported as "still reachable", so I wanted to check whether
there was any difference if I detach(unload=TRUE) the package after
all the tests.
In a nutshell, I ended up discovering that the following code:
```
library(simmer)
simmer() # allocates a C++ object, as in my initial example
detach("package:simmer", unload=TRUE)
```
segfaults on Windows, but not on Linux (then I built the example in my
initial email to confirm it wasn't simmer's fault). So given that,
from your explanation, I should expect a segfault here, the question
is: what on Earth does (or does not) R on Linux do to avoid
segfaulting compared to Windows? :) And a corolary would be, can't R
on Windows do the same?
Regards,
I?aki
El jue., 9 ago. 2018 a las 21:13, <luke-tierney at uiowa.edu> escribi?:
On Thu, 9 Aug 2018, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
On 9 August 2018 at 20:37, Tomas Kalibera wrote: | So to answer your original question, this could probably be handled in | Rcpp, Hm. Why do you say that / what did you have in mind?
We say it because it is true. Rcpp registers C finalizers and running them after unloading will segfault. For now it would be better for Rcpp (and everyone else) to explicitly discourage unloading as it is unreliable on many levels. What Rcpp could do to avoid segfaulting is to keep a weak list of all objects to which it attaches C finalizers and arrange for those to be cleaned up in an R_unload_<dllname> routine. Not clear it is worth the trouble. At the R level we could provide more support for this since we already have a weak list of objects with finalizers, but again not clear it is worth the trouble. Best, luke
Recall that we do not alter SEXPs or introduce additional additional reference counters -- because we do not think that altering the basic R API for such calls would be a wise strategy. So we do more or less what is done in C for R, with some additional hand-holding which circumvents a number of common errors. | but in either case I would not use dyn.unload() in the first | place. This problem may be just one of many. I think I'd second that. I never had much unloading packages or dynamic libraries and tend to "just say no". Both short-lived processes (ie via 'r') as well as long sessions (ie R via ESS, running for weeks) work for my workflows. Dirk
--
Luke Tierney
Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
University of Iowa Phone: 319-335-3386
Department of Statistics and Fax: 319-335-3017
Actuarial Science
241 Schaeffer Hall email: luke-tierney at uiowa.edu
Iowa City, IA 52242 WWW: http://www.stat.uiowa.edu
-- I?aki ?car http://www.enchufa2.es @Enchufa2