Re: [PATCH] Reduce gdb.base/many-headers.c iterations on Solaris [PR34555]

[Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com>]

Rainer Orth <ro@CeBiTec.Uni-Bielefeld.DE> writes:

> As detailed in PR corefiles/34555, when reading the core file in the
> gdb.base/many-headers.exp test, gdb consumes excessive amounts of memory
> on Solaris.  If left unchecked, e.g. with ulimit -Sv 8388608, the test
> will consume all available swap space.  Since Solaris doesn't do lazy
> allocation, this will cause the system to become unusably slow.
>
> To avoid this, this patch reduces the iteration count by a factor of 100.
>
> Tested on sparcv9-sun-solaris2.11, x86_64-pc-solaris2.11, and
> x86_64-pc-linux-gnu.
>
> Ok for trunk and the gdb-18 branch?
>
>
> AFAICT, the issue is purely in gdb's Solaris corefile reader, which
> seems to need a complete rewrite rather than a couple of bugfixes.

Hi Rainer,

How would you feel about the patch below being pushed?

This skips the gdb.base/many-headers.exp test on Solaris.  This should
prevent the memory exhaustion issues you are hitting, while not changing
the underlying purpose of the test.

Thanks,
Andrew

~~~

commit acf2c031172b792037874f2a985a6db931c083d8
Author: Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com>
Date:   Mon Sep 21 11:48:00 2026 +0100

    gdb/testsuite: skip gdb.base/many-headers.exp on Solaris
    
    Bug PR gdb/34555 reports that the gdb.base/many-headers.exp test
    script can trigger memory exhaustion issues on Solaris.  This makes
    running the testsuite harder.  Skip the test on Solaris targets.
    
    Bug: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=34555

diff --git a/gdb/testsuite/gdb.base/many-headers.exp b/gdb/testsuite/gdb.base/many-headers.exp
index 049c601cf67..b70177da22a 100644
--- a/gdb/testsuite/gdb.base/many-headers.exp
+++ b/gdb/testsuite/gdb.base/many-headers.exp
@@ -24,6 +24,21 @@ if { [target_info gdb_protocol] != "" } {
     return
 }
 
+if { [istarget "*-*-solaris*"] } {
+    # This quote is taken from PR gdb/34555:
+    #
+    #   When running the gdb.base/many-headers.exp test on Solaris,
+    #   gdb consumes excessive amounts of memory.  Because Solaris
+    #   doesn't use lazy allocation, this eventually consumes all
+    #   swap, slows the machine to a crawl, and often requires a
+    #   reboot.
+    #
+    # To avoid this, and make running the testsuite easier, let's skip
+    # this test for now.
+    untested "test triggers memory exhaustion (PR gdb/34555)"
+    return
+}
+
 standard_testfile
 
 if {[build_executable "failed to prepare" $testfile $srcfile debug]} {