Our hardware is MIPS64 Octeon II machines for which we have built software using both the 2.2 and 3.1 Octeon SDK. When the valgrind memcheck tools starts, it hangs up on program execution, spinning somewhere on a single core.

Different compilation options may cause different behaviour, ie. Bus Error. However most commonly valgrind will hang and be unable to detect the memory leaks within an application.

Ex:

$ VALGRIND_LIB=SystemMIPS64_SDK3.1/lib/valgrind ~/SystemMIPS64_SDK3.1/bin/valgrind --leak-check=full ./valgrind-test 
==31151== Memcheck, a memory error detector
==31151== Copyright (C) 2002-2013, and GNU GPL'd, by Julian Seward et al.
==31151== Using Valgrind-3.10.0.SVN and LibVEX; rerun with -h for copyright info
==31151== Command: ./valgrind-test
==31151== 
==31151== Conditional jump or move depends on uninitialised value(s)
==31151==    at 0x1000AA68: malloc (malloc.c:2855)
==31151==    by 0x1003B160: _dl_init_paths (dl-load.c:731)
==31151==    by 0x100119D4: _dl_non_dynamic_init (dl-support.c:271)
==31151==    by 0x10012404: __libc_init_first (init-first.c:82)
==31151==    by 0x10004C8C: (below main) (libc-start.c:164)
==31151== 

..... hangs here indefinitely .....

^C==31151== 
==31151== HEAP SUMMARY:
==31151==     in use at exit: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
==31151==   total heap usage: 0 allocs, 0 frees, 0 bytes allocated
==31151== 
==31151== All heap blocks were freed -- no leaks are possible
==31151== 
==31151== For counts of detected and suppressed errors, rerun with: -v
==31151== Use --track-origins=yes to see where uninitialised values come from
==31151== ERROR SUMMARY: 1 errors from 1 contexts (suppressed: 0 from 0)

This output was generated using Valgrind version 3.10.SVN, and has identical output on versions >= 3.8. The code that generated this is a simple while loop that leaks 100 bytes of memory every second. It is provided below.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Compile Valgrind with the Octeon SDK 3.1 or 2.2 toolchain for MIPS64 (OCTEON_CN63XX)
2. Generate leaky binary with toolchain, the following options in the given example above was: 
"mips64-octeon-linux-gnu-gcc -std=c99 -O0 -ggdb -Wall -march=octeon2 -mabi=64 -msoft-float -static -o valgrind-test valgrind-test.c"
3. Run valgrind on mips platform against generated binary.
Actual Results:  
Hangs on memcheck, fails to detect any memory leaks within application.

Expected Results:  
In example source, a 1000 bytes of leaked memory detected.

I was unable to specify the correct build above, the correct version is 3.10.SVN, I built valgrind itself with the Octeon SDK 3.1 toolchain using the following configuration options:

./configure --enable-only64bit --with-pagesize=4 --prefix=/home/will/SystemMIPS64_SDK3.1 --host=mips64-octeon-linux-gnu

Source for given example of valgrind output:

/*
 * valgrind-test.c
 * This source is in the public domain.
 */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <pthread.h>

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
        void* leak;

        for(int i=0; i < 10; i++) {
                leak = malloc(100);
                printf("Leak Addr: %p\n", leak);
                sleep(1);
        }

        return 0;
}