The fourth project is to build your own implementation of malloc and free. That is, you will need to implement a library that interacts with the operating system to perform heap management on behalf of a user process as demonstrated in class.
As demonstrated in malloc0.c from Lecture 15, writing a functional heap management system is relatively straightforward:
Simply grow the heap using the sbrk system call whenever the user requests memory at run-time.
Unfortunately, this initial version of a heap manager has some serious problems:
It doesn't actually free anything, so it is quite possible (and likely) that we would eventually run out of memory.
It doesn't keep track of blocks that have been allocated but are no longer in-use (ie. free), so it will never re-use a previous allocation. This is both wasteful (as there is memory that we could use, but don't), and it is slow because we are then forced to call sbrk, which is a system call and thus incurs the overhead of context switching.
To remedy this, we wrote malloc1.c, which utilizes a circular doubly-linked free list to keep track of only the free blocks as shown below:
The malloc1.c shown in class has the following features:
It maintains a free list of all the free blocks (previously allocated blocks that are no longer in use).
malloc will search this free list for a free block it can re-use. If no such block exists, it will simply fall-back to growing the heap with sbrk.
free will insert released blocks to the free list to make them available for future re-use.
While this second version is better than the first heap manager, it is still lacking important features. For this project, you are to extend the functionality of the malloc1.c allocator to incorporate the following:
Ensure that all memory allocations are aligned to the nearest word size.
Implement multiple search algorithms (First Fit, Best Fit, and Worst Fit).
To support different strategies in the same source file, we will use C's #if directive to select different blocks of code at compile time.
Implement shrinking the heap when a block is released.
Implement splitting a block when it is re-used.
Implement merging a block when it is inserted into the free list.
Add counters to keep track of number of operations performed by the allocator and the amount of internal fragmentation and external fragmentation. When the process exits, the library should output the following type of information (based on the counters):
blocks: 0
free blocks: 0
mallocs: 10
frees: 10
callocs: 0
reallocs: 0
reuses: 0
grows: 10
shrinks: 10
splits: 0
merges: 0
requested: 10240
heap size: 0
internal: 0.00
external: 0.00
Once you have a working malloc implementation (as verified by the provided functional and unit tests), you are to analyze the metrics above for the different heap management strategies.
Note: We will not consider thread-safety or support multiple threads at all for this project.
Working individually, you are to create a library that implements malloc and free by 11:59PM on Monday, November 11, 2019. More details about this project and your deliverables are described below.
Implementing your own heap management library is more common than you think. For instance, Firefox uses jemalloc, while GNU uses dlmalloc, and Google provides tcmalloc. As hardware and operating systems evolve, the optimal heap management strategies change as well, and so developers continue to advance the state of the art. For this project, we will focus on understanding the basics and getting something that works (good enough).
For a reference on how to create a simple heap management library, I recommend: A quick tutorial on implementing and debugging malloc, free, calloc, and realloc. This is what I initially used as the basis for this project.
As noted above, you are to work individually to implement your heap management library. You must use C (not C++) as the implementation language. Any test scripts or auxillary tools can be written in any reasonable scripting language.
Here is a timeline of events related to this project:
Date | Event |
---|---|
Monday, October 21 | Project description and repository are available. |
Saturday, November 2 | Brainstorming should be completed. |
Monday, November 11 | Library is due (pushed to GitLab malloc branch). |
For the final submission, please open a Merge Request on your
repository (for your malloc
branch to the master
branch) and assign it
to your grader from the Reading 08 TA List.
To start this project, you must fork the Project 04 repository on GitLab:
https://gitlab.com/nd-cse-30341-fa19/cse-30341-fa19-project04
Once this repository has been forked, follow the instructions from Reading 00 to:
Make the repository private.
Configure access to the repository.
Make sure you add all the members of the team in addition to the instructional staff.
Note: Do your work in a separate git branch that can be later merged
into the master
branch (ie. make a malloc
branch, DO NOT COMMIT OR
MERGE TO MASTER).
The Project 04 repository includes a README.md
file with the following
sections:
Student: This should be your name and email address.
Brainstorming: This should contain your responses to the provided brainstorming questions (optional for this project).
Reflection: This should contain your responses to the provided reflection questions.
Errata: This should contain a description of any known errors or deficiencies in your implementation.
Extra Credit: This should contain a description of any extra credit you attempted or completed.
You must complete this document report as part of your project.
While it is tempting to write a long response to the brainstorming and reflection questions, please limit yourself to a few sentences at the most for each response.
This will facilitate more efficient grading and it will help you practice distilling ideas into their absolute essentials (which is useful for real world communication and for answering questions on exams).
As you can see, the base Project 04 repository contains a README.md
file and the following folder hierarchy:
project04
\_ Makefile # This is the project Makefile
\_ bin # This contains the binary executables and test scripts
\_ include
\_ malloc # This contains the malloc library header files
\_ lib # This contains the malloc library when built
\_ src # This contains the malloc library source code
\_ tests # This contains the functional and unit test code
You must maintain this folder structure for your project and place files in their appropriate place.
To help you get started, we have provided a Makefile
with all the
necessary targets:
$ make # Build libraries and test applications
Building lib/libmalloc-ff.so
Building lib/libmalloc-bf.so
Building lib/libmalloc-wf.so
Building bin/test_01
Building bin/unit_block
Building bin/test_03
Building bin/test_02
Building bin/test_00
Building bin/test_04
Building bin/unit_freelist
Building bin/test_05
$ make clean # Removes all targets
Removing libraries
Removing tests
While the exact organization of the project code is up to you, keep in mind that you will be graded in part on coding style, cleaniness, and organization. This means your code should be consistently formatted, not contain any dead code, have reasonable comments, and appropriate naming among other things:
Break long functions into smaller functions.
Make sure each function does one thing and does it well.
Abstract, but don't over do it.
Please refer to these Coding Style slides for some tips and guidelines on coding style expectations.
Once you have the library, you can use it to override the existing malloc
functions from the standard library by using the LD_PRELOAD
trick:
# Use our implementation of library
$ env LD_PRELOAD=lib/libmalloc-ff.so cat README.md
This will load our library first and thus link any calls to malloc and
free in cat
to our library rather than the standard C library. To
make this more convenient, you should consider creating a bin/run.sh
script that sets the environment variable for you and then runs the
specified command.
Note: there are three versions of our custom malloc implementation, where each version corresponds to a different search algorithm (first fit (ff), best fit (bf), and worst fit (wf)).
All of the C header files are in the include/malloc
folder, while the
C source code for the malloc library is in the src
folder. To help
you get started, parts of the project are already implemented:
[x] include/malloc/block.h # Block structure header (implemented)
[x] include/malloc/counters.h # Counters header (implemented)
[x] include/malloc/freelist.h # Free List header (implemented)
[~] src/malloc_block.c # Block structure definitions (partially implemented)
[~] src/malloc_counters.c # Counters definitions (partially implemented)
[ ] src/malloc_freelist.c # Free List definitions (not implemented)
[~] src/malloc.c # POSIX definitions (partially implemented)
Basically, the malloc1.c code demonstrated in Lecture 15 was taken and split into separate files to form the skeleton provided to you. Additionally, we have implemented most of the desired counting functionality for you, so you can concentrate on just the block manipulation and free list management operations. Each of the functions in the incomplete files above have comments that describe what needs to be done.
You will need to examine these source files and complete the implementation
of a malloc library that uses a circular doubly-linked free list to
track free blocks. To do so, you should start with the basic Block
functions, then move to the free list functions. Once those pass the
provided unit tests, you should then utilize those components to complete
the malloc, free, calloc, and realloc functions:
src/malloc_block.c
: This file contains the functions for the Block
structure, which contains the aligned capacity
of the requested
allocation and the unaligned size
of the requested allocation
(neither of which includes space for the embedded Block
structure), and
pointers to the previous and next Block
structures. If the Block
is
detached, then it should just point to itself.
You will need to think carefully about how to manipulate the Block
structure in the context of circular doubly-linked list with a sentinel
node.
src/malloc_counters.c
: This file contains the functions for keeping
track of the various counters utilized in the library. Whenever malloc
is called, it will call the init_counters
function which will register
the dump_counters
function to run when the program properly terminates.
You will need to implement the functions for computing the internal fragmentation and external fragmentation of the heap.
src/malloc_freelist.c
: This file contains the functions for the free
list.
You will need to think carefully about what needs to happen during searching and insertion.
src/malloc.c
: This file contains the POSIX functions: malloc,
free, calloc, realloc.
You will need to think carefully about which of the previous functions you want to utilize.
Note: There are also some TODOs
to help identify which parts you need
to implement, along with how you will want to modify the counters.
For better performance, all memory allocations should be aligned by the
word size of the current machine. For instance, if the user requests
14
bytes and our word size is 8
bytes, then we will actually allocate
16
bytes as this is the nearest multiple of the word size (that has
sufficient capacity).
A ALIGN
macro is provided to you that will perform this rounding
automatically for you. Whenever you are comparing or determining
sizes, you need to think carefully if you want to use the original size
as requested by the user and stored in the Block
structure (e.g. 14
) or
if you really want to use the capacity of the Block (e.g.
block->capacity
) which stores the original aligned allocation
capacity.
Failure to properly utilize this ALIGN
macro will most likely lead to
subtle and frustrating errors.
As you develop your library, you should utilize the provided functional and unit tests that ensure your heap management library works correctly:
$ make test # Build and runs test programs
Running unit_block 0
Running unit_block 1
Running unit_block 2
Running unit_block 3
Running unit_block 4
Running unit_freelist 0
Running unit_freelist 1
Running unit_freelist 2
Running unit_freelist 3
Running unit_freelist 4
Running run_test_00.sh
Testing libmalloc-ff.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so ... success
Running run_test_01.sh
Testing libmalloc-ff.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so ... success
Running run_test_02.sh
Testing libmalloc-ff.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so ... success
Running run_test_03.sh
Testing libmalloc-ff.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so ... success
Running run_test_04.sh
Testing libmalloc-ff.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so ... success
Running run_test_05.sh
Timing libmalloc-ff.so ... 0m1.721s
Timing libmalloc-bf.so ... 0m2.776s
Timing libmalloc-wf.so ... 0m2.781s
Running run_test_06.sh
Testing libmalloc-ff.so (cat tests/test_00.c tests/test_01.c tests/test_02.c tests/test_03.c tests/test_04.c tests/unit_block.c tests/unit_freelist.c)... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so (cat tests/test_00.c tests/test_01.c tests/test_02.c tests/test_03.c tests/test_04.c tests/unit_block.c tests/unit_freelist.c)... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so (cat tests/test_00.c tests/test_01.c tests/test_02.c tests/test_03.c tests/test_04.c tests/unit_block.c tests/unit_freelist.c)... success
Testing libmalloc-ff.so (md5sum bin/run_test_00.sh bin/run_test_01.sh bin/run_test_02.sh bin/run_test_03.sh bin/run_test_04.sh bin/run_test_05.sh bin/run_test_06.sh)... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so (md5sum bin/run_test_00.sh bin/run_test_01.sh bin/run_test_02.sh bin/run_test_03.sh bin/run_test_04.sh bin/run_test_05.sh bin/run_test_06.sh)... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so (md5sum bin/run_test_00.sh bin/run_test_01.sh bin/run_test_02.sh bin/run_test_03.sh bin/run_test_04.sh bin/run_test_05.sh bin/run_test_06.sh)... success
Testing libmalloc-ff.so (sort src/malloc_block.c src/malloc.c src/malloc_counters.c src/malloc_freelist.c)... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so (sort src/malloc_block.c src/malloc.c src/malloc_counters.c src/malloc_freelist.c)... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so (sort src/malloc_block.c src/malloc.c src/malloc_counters.c src/malloc_freelist.c)... success
Testing libmalloc-ff.so (dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/null bs=1024 count=1024)... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so (dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/null bs=1024 count=1024)... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so (dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/null bs=1024 count=1024)... success
Testing libmalloc-ff.so (du /lib/)... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so (du /lib/)... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so (du /lib/)... success
Testing libmalloc-ff.so (find /lib/)... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so (find /lib/)... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so (find /lib/)... success
Note, you can run tests individually:
$ ./bin/run_test_00.sh
Testing libmalloc-ff.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-bf.so ... success
Testing libmalloc-wf.so ... success
While running the tests, you may encounter some segfaults and other memory errors. Because we are side-loading our own malloc implementation, you will need to do the following to debug a test application using gdb.
$ gdb ./bin/test_01
...
(gdb) set exec-wrapper env LD_PRELOAD=./lib/libmalloc-ff.so
(gdb) run
...
(gdb) bt
Basically, you want to first load gdb with the test program that is
crashing. Next, you need to tell gdb to utilize the appropriate malloc
library by creating an exec-wrapper
that loads it into memory. Next,
simply run the program. Once it segfaults, you can print a stack trace by
using the bt
command. From there, you can explore the state of your
program and see if you can determine what went wrong.
Once you have completed your project, you may extend the implementation of the malloc library by performing either (or both) of the following modifications:
Make your malloc library thread-safe and then demonstrate its safety by making a test application that uses multiple threads that repeatedly call malloc and free.
Rather than having a single free list, modify your free list to internally utilize segregated lists such that allocations come out different lists based on the size of the request.
Each modification is worth 2.0 points each.
Note: Do your work in a separate git branch that can be later merged
into the master
branch (ie. make a ec-thread
or ec-segregated
branch,
DO NOT COMMIT OR MERGE TO MASTER).
Your project will be graded on the following metrics:
Metric | Points |
---|---|
Source Code
|
21.0
|
Documentation
|
3.0
|
To encourage you to work on the project regularly (rather than leaving it until the last second) and to practice performing incremental development, part of your grade will be based on whether or not you have regular and reasonably sized commits in your git log.
That is, you will lose a point if you commit everything at once near the project deadline.