How I debugged memory leak issue for mediaserver

Recently I had to fix big memory leak issue in “medieaserver”. From the internet I found very nice tool called addr2func for fixing the issue.

The tool is written by freepine and I modified for supporting latest version of AOSP bases codes(5.0) and uploaded into Github : addr2func

Pre-condition - eng or userdebug build of device and android full source code

1. Download addr2func

2. Give excute permission.

   $chmod +x addr2func.py
   

3. Enable memory allocation debug feature for mediaserver.

   $adb shell setprop libc.debug.malloc 1
   $adb shell ps mediaserver
   $adb shell kill <mediaserver_pid>
   

4. Dump memory status of mediaserver into dump1 file.

   $adb shell ps mediaserver
   $adb pull /proc/<mediaserver_pid>/maps
   $adb shell dumpsys media.player -m > dump1
   

5. Do the memory leak test on the device.

6. Dump memory status of mediaserver into dump2 file.

   $adb pull /proc/<mediaserver_pid>/maps
   $adb shell dumpsys media.player -m > dump2
   

7. make diff between dump1 and dump2.

   $diff dump1 dump2 > diff
   

8. Save memory allocation trace into mem_trace file.

   $./addr2func.py --root-dir=<AOSP_dir> --maps-file=maps --product=<product_name_of_your_build> diff > mem_trace
   

The memory allocation trace is saved in mem_trace file. It will show you where exactly the memory is allocated. dup is duplication count.