Automatically resource leak diagnosis and detecting process within the operating system

Abstract

The resource leak detector attempts to identify the causes of resource leaks and fix the causes if possible. At a minimum, the located resource leaks are reported to an operating system manufacture for additional study and possible correction, either by the operating system manufacturer or the application manufacturer that is causing the resource leak. In an embodiment, in operation, a leak trigger for starting leak detection is started. If the leak trigger is activated, leak detection is started when an application begins. Resource allocations are tracked for the leaked resource and each leaked resource is matched to a corresponding allocation call stack. A type of the leaked resource may be identified. The leak detection and the leak trigger may be controlled according to at least one of a local policy and a global policy. The local and the global policy may be updated dynamically such as by using aggregated occurrences of applications that met the local policy or by matching a plurality of distinct types of leaked resources to the same call stack. A leak report may be generated of resource leak data where the leak report is stored locally or communicated to a local aggregation database or remote aggregation database. The leak report may include total leaked allocations, total size of leaked allocations, total outstanding allocations, total size of outstanding allocations and matched allocation call stacks. The leaked resource may be automatically reclaimed and a fix to the leaked resource may be created and applied automatically.