1 Installing from ports or via pkg
2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4 You can install Valgrind using either
6 pkg install devel/valgrind
8 or alternatively from ports (if installed)
10 cd /usr/ports/devel/valgrind && make install clean
12 devel/valgrind is updated with official releases of Valgrind, normally
13 in April and October each year. There is an alternative port,
14 devel/valgrind-devel which occasionally gets updated from the latest
15 Valgrind source. If you want to have the latest port, check on
16 https://www.freshports.org/ to see which is the most recent. If you
17 want to have the very latest version, you will need to build a copy
18 from source. See README for instructions on getting the source with git.
24 Install ports for autotools, gmake and python.
27 $ ./configure --prefix=/where/ever
31 If you are using a jail for building, make sure that it is configured so that
32 "uname -r" returns a string that matches the pattern "XX.Y-*" where XX is the
33 major version (12, 13, 14 ...) and Y is the minor version (0, 1, 2, 3).
35 Known Limitations (June 2022)
37 0. Be aware that if you use a wrapper script and run Valgrind on the wrapper
38 script Valgrind may hit restrictions if the wrapper script runs any
39 Capsicum enabled applications. Examples of Capsicum enabled applications
40 are echo, basename, tee, uniq and wc. It is recommended that you either
41 avoid these applications or that you run Valgrind directly on your test
43 1. There are some limitations when running Valgrind on code that was compiled
44 with clang. These issues are not present with code compiled with GCC.
45 a) There may be missing source information concerning variables due
46 to DWARF extensions used by GCC.
47 b) Code that uses OpenMP will generate spurious errors.
48 2. vgdb invoker, which uses ptrace, may cause system calls to be
49 interrupted. As an example, if the debuggee seems to have be
50 stuck and you press Ctrl-C in gdb the debuggee may execute
51 one more statement before stopping and returning control to
57 See README_DEVELOPERS, README_MISSING_SYSCALL_OR_IOCTL and docs/*
58 for more general information for developers.
62 When adding syscalls, you need to look at the manpage and also syscalls.master
64 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/sys/kern/syscalls.master
66 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/sys/compat/freebsd32/syscalls.master
68 and if you installed the src package there should also be
70 /usr/src/sys/kern/syscalls.master
72 /usr/src/sys/compat/freebsd32/syscalls.master)
74 syscalls.master is particularly useful for seeing quickly whether parameters
75 are inputs or outputs.
77 The syscall wrappers can vary from trivial to difficult. Fortunately, many are
78 either trivial (no arguments) or easy (Valgrind just needs to know what memory
79 is being read or written). Some syscalls, such as those involving process
80 creation and termination, signals and memory mapping require deeper interaction
83 When you add syscalls you will need to modify several files
84 a) include/vki/vki-scnums-freebsd.h
85 This file contains one #define for each syscall. The _NR_ prefix (Linux
86 style) is used rather than SYS_ for compatibility with the rest of the
88 b) coregrind/m_syswrap/priv_syswrap-freebsd.h
89 This uses the DECL_TEMPLATE macro to generate declarations for the syscall
90 before and after wrappers.
91 c) coregrind/m_syswrap/syswrap-freebsd.c
92 This is where the bulk of the code resides. Toward the end of the file
93 the BSDX_/BSDXY macros are used to generate entries in the table of
94 syscalls. BSDX_ is used for wrappers that only have a 'before', BSDXY
95 if both wrappers are required. In general, syscalls that have no arguments
96 or only input arguments just need a BSDX_ macro (before only). Syscalls
97 with output arguments need a BSDXY macro (before and after).
98 d) If the syscall uses 64bit arguments (long long) then instead of putting
99 the wrapper definitions in syswrap-freebsd.c there will be one definition
100 for each platform amd64 and x86 in syswrap-x86-freebsd.c and
101 syswrap-amd64-freebsd.c.
102 Each long long needs to be split into two ARGs in the x86 version.
104 The PRE (before) wrapper
105 ------------------------
107 Each PRE wrapper always contains the following two macro calls
109 PRINT. This outputs the syscall name and argument values when Valgrind is
113 PRE_READ_REGX. This macro lets Valgrind know about the number and types of the
114 syscall arguments which allows Valgrind to check that they are initialized.
115 X is the number of arguments. It is best that the argument names match
116 the man page, but they must match the types and number of arguments in
117 syscalls.master. Occasionally there are differences between the two.
119 If the syscall takes pointers to memory there will be one of the following for
120 each pointer argument.
122 PRE_MEM_RASCIIZ for NULL terminated ascii strings.
124 PRE_MEM_READ for pointers to structures or arrays that are read.
126 PRE_MEM_WRITE for pointers to structures or arrays that are written.
128 As a rule, the definitions of structures are copied into vki-freebsd.h
129 with the vki- prefix. [vki - Valgrind kernel interface; this was done
130 historically to protect against discrepancies between user include
131 structure definitions and kernel definitions on Linux].
133 The POST (after) wrapper
134 ------------------------
136 These are much easier.
138 They just contain a POST_MEM_WRITE macro for each output argument.
140 1. Frequent causes of problems
142 - New _umtx_op codes. Valgrind will print "WARNING: _umtx_op unsupported value".
143 See syswrap-freebsd.c and add new cases for the new codes.
144 - Additions to auxv. Depending on the entry it may need to be simply copied
145 from the host to the guest, it may need to be modified for the guest or
146 it may need to be ignored. See initimg-freebsd.c.
147 - ELF PT_LOAD mappings. Either Valgrind will assert or there will be no source
148 information in error reports. See VG_(di_notify_mmap) in debuginfo.c
149 - Because they contain many deliberate errors the regression tests are prone
150 to change with changes of compiler. Liberal use of 'volatile' and
151 '-Wno-warning-flag' can help - see configure.ac
153 2. Running regression tests
155 In order to run all of the regression tests you will need to install
156 the following packages
160 In addition to running "gmake" you will need to run
161 "gmake check" to build the regression test exectutables
162 and "gmake regtest". Again, more details can be seen in
165 If you want to run the 'nightly' script (see nightly/README.txt)
166 you will need to install coreutils (for GNU cp) and modify the
167 nightly/conf/freebsd.* files. The default configuration
168 sends an e-mail to the valgrind-testresults mailing list.
173 If you find any problems please create a bugzilla report at
174 https://bugs.kde.org using the Valgrind product.
176 Alternatively you can use the FreeBSD bugilla
177 https://bugs.freebsd.org
182 Valgrind was originally ported to FreeBSD by Doug Rabson
185 Paul Floyd (that's me), started looking at this project in late 2018,
186 took a long pause and then continued in earnest in January 2020.
188 A big thanks to Nick Briggs for helping with the x86 version.
190 Kyle Evans and Ed Maste for contributing patches and helping with the
191 integration with FreeBSD ports.
193 Prior to 2018 many others have also contributed.
200 Brian Fundakowski Feldman