The easy-portable method of illegal memory access errors detection

Sergey Grekhov

Nowadays applications on embedded systems become more and more complex and require more effective facilities for debugging, particularly, for detecting memory access errors. Existing tools usually have strong dependence on the architecture of processors that makes its usage difficult due to big variety of types of CPUs. In this paper an easy-portable solution of problem of heap memory overflow errors detection is suggested. The proposed technique uses substitution of standard allocation functions for creating additional memory regions (so called "red zones") for detecting overflows and intercepting of page faulting mechanism for tracking memory accesses. Tests have shown that this approach allows detecting illegal memory access errors in heap with sufficient precision. Besides, it has a small processor-dependent part that makes this method easy-portable for embedded systems which have big variety of types of processors.