Skip to content
Commit c796e021 authored by Matt Caswell's avatar Matt Caswell
Browse files

Document the issue with threads and dlopen()



If using threads and OpenSSL is loaded via dlopen(), and subsequently
closed again via dlclose() *before* the threads are destroyed, then
OpenSSL will not free up the per thread resources. We need to document
this restriction, and provide some guidance on what to do about it.

I did some testing and discovered/verified a few of things (at least
this is the behaviour on Linux):

- Using OpenSSL via dlopen in a mutli-threaded app does leak memory if
threads are destroyed after dlcose() is called.
- In a single threaded environment, or if threads are destroyed prior to
dlclose() being called, then no memory is leaked
- Using the RTLD_NODELETE flag to dlopen solves the above problem
- Interestingly the OpenSSL atexit() handler gets called when dlclose()
is called rather than at application exit (I was worred that it might crash
if there was an atexit() handler for a function that has been unloaded)
- RTLD_NODELETE is a non-standard flag - but it does seem to be fairly
widely supported. As far as I could determine (via google), at least Linux,
Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, HP-UX all seem to support it.

I also tested on Windows (using LoadLibrary instead of dlopen and
FreeLibrary instead of dlclose) and experienced similar behaviour, except
that (AFAIK) there is no equivalent of RTLD_NODELETE on Windows.

GitHub Issue #653

Reviewed-by: default avatarRichard Levitte <levitte@openssl.org>
parent bb9ad09e
0% or .
You are about to add 0 people to the discussion. Proceed with caution.
Finish editing this message first!
Please register or to comment