Beyond Linux® From Scratch (System V Edition) - Version r12.4-426

Chapter 13. Programming

Valgrind-3.26.0

Introduction to Valgrind

Valgrind is an instrumentation framework for building dynamic analysis tools. There are Valgrind tools that can automatically detect many memory management and threading bugs, and profile programs in detail. Valgrind can also be used to build new tools.

[Note]

Note

Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.

Package Information

Valgrind Dependencies

Optional

docbook-xml-4.5 (for tests), GDB-16.3 (for tests), libaio-0.3.113, LLVM-21.1.2 (with Clang), and Which-2.23 (for tests)

Installation of Valgrind

Install Valgrind by running the following commands: 

sed -i 's|/doc/valgrind||' docs/Makefile.in &&

./configure --prefix=/usr \
            --datadir=/usr/share/doc/valgrind-3.26.0 &&
make

To test the results, issue: make regtest. The tests may hang forever if GDB-16.3 is not installed. Some tests are known to hang also, depending on the version of glibc. A few tests can fail in various suites. Problematic tests can be disabled by changing the prereq: line in the corresponding .vgtest file to prereq: false. For example: 

sed -e 's@prereq:.*@prereq: false@' \
    -i {helgrind,drd}/tests/pth_cond_destroy_busy.vgtest

An additional test suite is now available that tests Valgrind with every system call provided by the kernel. The test suite is designed to test not only glibc and the kernel's conformance to standards, but also Valgrind's ability to handle different system calls. The test suite does require an internet connection to download the tests, and it takes a long time to run (an additional 20 SBUs and 1.3GB of disk space.) If you wish to run this test suite, issue the following command: make ltpchecks. Note that the output will show several failures where Valgrind does not currently support certain system calls, but the logs for the test suite can be found in the auxprogs/auxchecks/ltp-full-20250130/valgrind-ltp-logs directory.

[Note]

Note

The OpenMP tests are skipped if libgomp has been compiled with --enable-linux-futex (the default). If needed, just recompile the libgomp library from the gcc build tree, passing --disable-linux-futex to configure, storing the library to some place and changing the link from /usr/lib/libgomp.so.1 to point to the new library.

Now, as the root user: 

make install

Command Explanations

sed -i ... docs/Makefile.in : This sed provides for installing the documentation in a versioned directory.

--enable-lto=yes: This option allows building Valgrind with LTO (link time optimization). This produces a smaller/faster Valgrind (up to 10%), but build time increases to about 5.5 SBU.

Contents

Installed Programs: callgrind_annotate, callgrind_control, cg_annotate, cg_diff, cg_merge, ms_print, valgrind, valgrind-di-server, valgrind-listener, and vgdb
Installed Libraries: None
Installed Directories: /usr/lib/valgrind, /usr/libexec/valgrind, /usr/include/valgrind, and /usr/share/doc/valgrind-3.26.0

Short Descriptions

valgrind

is a program for debugging and profiling Linux executables

callgrind_annotate

takes an output file produced by the Valgrind tool Callgrind and prints the information in an easy-to-read form

callgrind_control

controls programs being run by the Valgrind tool Callgrind

cg_annotate

is a post-processing tool for the Valgrind tool Cachegrind

cg_diff

compares two Cachegrind output files

cg_merge

merges multiple Cachegrind output files into one

ms_print

takes an output file produced by the Valgrind tool Massif and prints the information in an easy-to-read form

valgrind-di-server

is a server that reads debuginfo from objects stored on a different machine

valgrind-listener

listens on a socket for Valgrind commentary

vgdb

is an intermediary between Valgrind and GDB or a shell