Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=79518&edit=1
ID: 79518
Updated by: nikic@php.net
Reported by: ivo at beerntea dot com
Summary: SimpleXML memory leak
-Status: Open
+Status: Not a bug
Type: Bug
Package: SimpleXML related
Operating System: Linux
PHP Version: 7.3.17
Block user comment: N
Private report: N
New Comment:
I ran you example through massif, and here's the memory usage over time we see:
GB
1.016^ #
| :#
| :::#
| ::::#
| @::::#
| :@::::#
| :::@::::#
| :::::@::::#:
| ::::::@::::#:
| :@:::::@::::#:
| @ :: : ::@:::::@::::#::
| :@ :: :: ::::@:::::@::::#::
| ::@ ::: @:: :::::@:::::@::::#::
| @::@ :@::: :::@:: ::::::@:::::@::::#::
| ::@::@: ::@::: ::: @:: :::::::@:::::@::::#::
| ::: @::@: :::@::: : :::: @::@ @@:::::::@:::::@::::#::
| :: : @::@: @::::@::: : @::::: @::@ :@ :::::::@:::::@::::#::
| ::: : @::@: :@::::@::: : :@::::: @::@ ::@ :::::::@:::::@::::#:::
| ::::: : @::@:: :@::::@::: : ::@::::: @::@ ::::@ :::::::@:::::@::::#:::
|:: ::: : @::@:::::@::::@::: ::::@::::: @::@:: ::@ :::::::@:::::@::::#:::
0 +----------------------------------------------------------------------->Gi
0 13.92
As you can see, the memory usage does drop back down to approximately zero in between processing of
different documents. The last peak is twice as high, because you keep two documents in memory at the
same time (note that you only reassign $dom *after* you already parsed the new document).
Looking at the output of operating-system provided metrics like /proc/self/statm can be misleading
if you don't actually know what you're doing. As a rule of thumb, you can assume that
memory allocators do not release memory back to the operating system for various reasons, be it
performance considerations or memory fragmentation. This memory is not leaked in any conventional
sense of the term, in that it will be reused the next time the process allocates more memory.
PHP's own allocator does release memory back to the operation system between requests
(retaining only enough memory to satisfy the average memory usage of requests), but as has been
noted before, for libxml the relevant allocator is the system allocator, and PHP has no control over
how it behaves.
I don't doubt that there may be memory leak bugs in PHP's use of libxml, but the examples
provided here do not show such a bug. When looking for memory leaks, use of massif (or plain
valgrind) is generally advisable, as it insulates you from details of the allocator and its
interaction with the operating system.
Previous Comments:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2021-02-10 02:49:01] jonah at yopmail dot com
Ivo's diagnosis is gold, that should be enought for any competent PHP dev to fix this paintful
problem. If PHP can't parse an XML or JSON file withoug leaking memory, then what's the
point of using PHP these days? Most other languages have perfected those formats years ago, this is
just bad.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2020-11-17 14:56:22] cmb@php.net
Thanks for further feedback! There might indeed be a memory leak,
but it should be possible to detect that with valgrind or
LeakSanitizer or such.
For further insights on libxml memory management, see
<http://xmlsoft.org/xmlmem.html>.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2020-11-17 14:44:37] ivo at beerntea dot com
I realize and agree that the memory requirements and external allocation by libxml is a separate
problem. I just mentioned it because it contributes to this supposed bug causing a real problem.
I have tested the script with USE_ZEND_ALLOC=0, this did not make a significant difference. Possibly
because the largest memory allocation is done by libxml and is not known to Zend.
I am not entirely sure what the allocated memory is used for. It appears that most of it is reused
on repeated calls, but is never released.
In a production application we noticed that the order of allocations can make a difference, if we
would load a large XML file, process it and then unset it, all memory would be released. If we
loaded another small XML document and allocated some memory in PHP while the large tree was still in
memory, the memory used by the large tree was never released even though there were no references to
XML nodes. I can not yet reproduce this in the test script as it just seems to keep the memory at
all times.
In case of the production application, the memory remained in use by the PHP FPM process that ran
the script, even after the script completed. Repeated requests for this script resulted in multiple
processes with a claim on a lot of memory and eventually an out of memory situation on the server.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2020-11-17 12:44:37] cmb@php.net
> In addition the XML DOM appeard to use significantly more memory
> than the original XML string, [â¦]
What is not unexpected, given that the DOM is stored as a tree
structure, with a lot of info for each node. That would be a
libxml issue, though.
> , and the memory used by the XML DOM is not accounted for by PHP
> (see #63380), allowing to bypass the PHP memory limit.
Besides that already tracked in the other bug report, it is not
likely something we can fix without further support from libxml.
> The memory used by the XML functions remains in use even when
> there are no more references:
Are you sure? This may be just the ZendMM optimization which does
not immediately give all possible memory back to the OS, to avoid
unnecessary re-allocations for the next request. To check that,
you can run the script(s) with USE_ZEND_ALLOC=0.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2020-04-24 10:35:27] ivo at beerntea dot com
Description:
------------
SimpleXML and DOMDocument (and possibly other libxml functions) do not always free the allocated
memory after all references to the XML/DOM object have been released.
This especially is a problem in environments where the same process is used to handle multiple
requests, like the FPM interface, as memory allocated by one script won't be released until the
FPM process is terminated. When handling large XML files this can easily push a server out of
memory.
In addition the XML DOM appeard to use significantly more memory than the original XML string, and
the memory used by the XML DOM is not accounted for by PHP (see #63380), allowing to bypass the PHP
memory limit.
PHP version: 7.3.17-1+ubuntu18.04.1+deb.sury.org+1
Linux kernel 4.15.0-91-generic x86_64
Test script:
---------------
<?php
function mstat() {
//Print reserved memory according to PHP and total mapped memory according to OS (assumes 4k page
size and Linux)
$statm = explode(' ', file_get_contents('/proc/self/statm'));
printf("PHP memory usage=%u MB, process memory usage=%u MB\n", memory_get_usage(TRUE) /
1024 / 1024, $statm[0] * 4096 / 1024 / 1024);
}
mstat();
$xml = '<doc>'.str_repeat('<node
attr="attr">test</node>', 1000000).'</doc>';
printf("Preparing big XML: %u MB.\n", strlen($xml) / 1024 / 1024);
mstat();
$flags = 0;
$flags |= LIBXML_COMPACT; //COMPACT flag reduces memory usage a little bit, not much
echo "Parsing DOM document without storing reference...\n";
(new \DOMDocument())->loadXML($xml, $flags);
mstat();
echo "Parse XML DOM without storing reference...\n";
simplexml_load_string($xml, 'SimpleXMLElement', $flags);
mstat();
echo "Parse XML DOM without storing reference...\n";
simplexml_load_string($xml, 'SimpleXMLElement', $flags);
mstat();
echo "Parse XML DOM storing reference...\n";
$dom = simplexml_load_string($xml, 'SimpleXMLElement', $flags);
mstat();
echo "Parse XML DOM overwriting reference...\n";
$dom = simplexml_load_string($xml, 'SimpleXMLElement', $flags);
mstat();
echo "Unset XML string...\n";
$xml = NULL;
mstat();
echo "Unset DOM references...\n";
$dom = $dom2 = $dom3 = NULL;
mstat();
Expected result:
----------------
Indicated memory usage should return back to the initial value after a reference to the XML/DOM
object is cleared.
Actual result:
--------------
The memory used by the XML functions remains in use even when there are no more references:
PHP memory usage=2 MB, process memory usage=391 MB
Preparing big XML: 27 MB.
PHP memory usage=29 MB, process memory usage=419 MB
Parsing DOM document without storing reference...
PHP memory usage=29 MB, process memory usage=892 MB
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=79518&edit=1