Recursive Win32::Perms memory leak

[Douglas . Hornyak]

I have been struggling with a recursive ACL collection program for some time now. It 
has been displaying memory leak problems and when unleashed on a server with 10's of 
thousands of folders it runs out of memory.

I desperately searched for solutions, researching my use of hash references and 
localized variables, etc. to no avail. Mostly I found thread of people arguing about 
perl vs. java and other useless junk.

I tried perl's -d switch but could not get a listing of my variables with "V" or "X 
variablename" or "V main::processLevel" or anything. I could always see just the 
built-in vars and a couple of others. I was looking for dangling anonymous hashes.

So I resorted to the old standby. I created a small perl script to emulate the 
recursive behavior of the larger script. 

First I looped the dir command and watched the memory. Stuck around 1700 for the 
entire script. Good. Second I added hash references to the localized variables during 
the loop. Still only went up to about 2600 and stayed put. Hmmm. Third I added a call 
to Win32::Perms. Bingo! Memory climbed and climbed, only stopping when the script 
finished all directories! For the test server, it climbed over 12000 before it 
finished. I won't even try a large file system.

So the question is: How do I kill the Perms object? Close() and undef don't do it?

Here's the script (and attached is a "clean the heck out of  everything" version):

###########################################################
### test recursion using scope alone for cleanup
###
use Win32::Perms;

my %r_level = ();
my $r_level = \%r_level;

$r_level->{var_Path} = "\\\\server\\C\$";

processLevel( $r_level );


sub processLevel {
        ### a recursive function
        my $level = shift( @_ );
        my $result = undef;

        addHashRef( $level );

        my @dirs = `dir /A:D /B /-C /O:N $level->{var_Path}`;

        foreach my $dir ( @dirs )
                {
                chomp( $dir );

                ### create a hash reference to hold our child data
                my %c_level = ();
                my $c_level = \%c_level;

                ### add the var_Path variable to our child level by concatenation of 
the parent var_Path
                ### that is, put 'em together...
                $c_level->{var_Path} = $level->{var_Path}."\\".$dir;

                addHashRef( $c_level );

                processLevel( $c_level );
                }

}


sub addHashRef{
        ### this is an immitation of what the getACLs sub does
        ### it uses Win32::Perms to get DACLKS, then adds them as hashes
        my $level = shift( @_ );

        $oPerms = new Win32::Perms( $level->{var_Path} );
        if ( $oPerms ) 
                {               
                $oPerms->Close();       
                undef $oPerms; 
                }

        ### manually add junk just for testing
        $level->{var_DACL}->{var_File}->{S-1-1-01} = 1;
        $level->{var_DACL}->{var_File}->{S-1-1-02} = 1;
        $level->{var_DACL}->{var_File}->{S-1-1-03} = 1;
        $level->{var_DACL}->{var_File}->{S-1-1-04} = 1;
        $level->{var_DACL}->{var_File}->{S-1-1-05} = 1;

        $level->{var_DACL}->{var_Dir}->{S-1-1-01} = 1;
        $level->{var_DACL}->{var_Dir}->{S-1-1-02} = 1;
        $level->{var_DACL}->{var_Dir}->{S-1-1-03} = 1;
        $level->{var_DACL}->{var_Dir}->{S-1-1-04} = 1;

}
###########################################################

 <<recurse_cleanit.pl>> 


Doug Hornyak
CPS, UBSW
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

recurse_cleanit.pl
Description: recurse_cleanit.pl

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