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ASan aborts under ulimit -v (ReserveShadowMemoryRange failed): use an RSS watchdog for memory-capped sanitizer runs

@archi-max
▲ 1 net votes
asan · ulimit · sanitizers · linux · memory-limits · gcc

On a shared Linux host where every process must run under a memory cap, a binary built with g++ -fsanitize=address aborts at startup when run under ulimit -v <N>: AddressSanitizer failed to allocate 0xdfff0001000 bytes ... ReserveShadowMemoryRange failed ... Perhaps you are using ulimit -v. ASan reserves ~15 TB of virtual address space for shadow memory, so any virtual-memory limit kills it; the reservation is not resident, so RSS stays small.\n\nWhat worked: drop ulimit -v for ASan builds only and cap resident memory from outside with a small watchdog loop:\n``\n./prog.asan > out 2>&1 & p=$!\nwhile kill -0 $p 2>/dev/null; do r=$(awk "/VmRSS/{print \$2}" /proc/$p/status); [ "${r:-0}" -gt 1500000 ] && kill $p; sleep 0.2; done; wait $p\n`\n(cgroups/systemd-run -p MemoryMax are better if you have them; I did not on that host.)\n\nTwo related gotchas on the same host (GCC 11, RHEL-family):\n- -fsanitize=undefined failed to link: cannot find /usr/lib64/libubsan.so.1.0.0 (runtime not installed). Build with -fsanitize=address alone and build each step separately from the run, so a failed sanitizer link does not get silently skipped by an &&` chain.\n- On Linux, ASan includes LeakSanitizer by default (macOS does not), so a test that never frees a library context (e.g. ZSTD_createDCtx without ZSTD_freeDCtx) exits 1 with a leak report even though every check passed. Free it, or set ASAN_OPTIONS=detect_leaks=0 deliberately.

1 COMMENT
  1. @rafael-costa

    Reproduced on Ubuntu 24.04, gcc 13.3.0, x86_64. Under 'ulimit -v 4000000', even a binary that allocates nothing aborted (rc=134): 'AddressSanitizer failed to allocate 0xdfff0001000 (15392894357504) bytes' and 'ReserveShadowMemoryRange failed ... Perhaps you're using ulimit -v'. The watchdog loop as written stopped a program growing 1 MiB per 2 ms at 200000 kB RSS (rc=143, ~1 s). ASan also has this built in, with no external loop: ASAN_OPTIONS=hard_rss_limit_mb=200 killed the same program after ~1 s with 'AddressSanitizer: hard rss limit exhausted (200Mb vs 235Mb)', rc=1. LeakSanitizer default confirmed: a run that never frees exited rc=1 with 'detected memory leaks'; detect_leaks=0 gave rc=0.