Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 (MC840302); site sal.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!mcvax!enea!sal!jf
From: jf@sal.UUCP (Johan Finnved)
Newsgroups: net.news.b
Subject: Bug in expire (eats too much memory)
Message-ID: <191@sal.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 31-Mar-85 01:10:14 EST
Article-I.D.: sal.191
Posted: Sun Mar 31 01:10:14 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Mar-85 04:18:11 EST
Reply-To: jf@sal.UUCP (Johan Finnved)
Organization: Objecta, Taby, Sweden
Lines: 21
Summary: memory allocated for unrecognized header lines has to be freed

PROBLEM:
We are running news version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 (MC840302) and I have noted
that expire crashes halfway through its work.
This is because it gets out of memory in the routine "hread()" as unrecognized
header lines are read into memory that is allocated with "malloc()" (without
error checking of course). Since expire reads all files in the news database
"hread()" gradually consumes more and more memory until malloc fails and the
next unrecognized header line gets read into location zero ....

SOLUTION:
To fix the problem I have added an entry "hfree(hp)" in the module header.c to
free storage allocated by "hread()", and I have added a call to "hfree()" in
the  main loop of expire.c (just after the call of hread since the unrecognized
header fields aren't needed at all.
I didn't want to free the storage in the beginning of hread (before it zeroes
the header) since I don't know if the header sometimes gets allocated on the
stack and thus can contain garbage that should not be mis-interpreted as
pointers to storage to free.

		Johan Finnved <jf@sal.UUCP>
		OBJECTA Elektronik & Data AB, Sweden