From 9ce3ee47ba21fd19859cf2953ee7e951f53e7da7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Lutz=20J=C3=A4nicke?= Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:39:15 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Add FAQ entry on how to get rid of Valgrind warnings. PR: 521 --- FAQ | 15 +++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+) diff --git a/FAQ b/FAQ index 74bf952dd..e00651e9c 100644 --- a/FAQ +++ b/FAQ @@ -66,6 +66,7 @@ OpenSSL - Frequently Asked Questions * Why doesn't my server application receive a client certificate? * Why does compilation fail due to an undefined symbol NID_uniqueIdentifier? * I think I've detected a memory leak, is this a bug? +* Why does Valgrind complain about the use of uninitialized data? =============================================================================== @@ -894,5 +895,19 @@ thread-safe): ERR_free_strings(), EVP_cleanup() and CRYPTO_cleanup_all_ex_data(). +* Why does Valgrind complain about the use of uninitialized data? + +OpenSSL does internally call its own PRNG routines to retrieve random +numbers. It so does with uninitialed buffer contents. The buffer +contents is mixed into the entropy pool so that it technically does +not matter whether the buffer is initialized at this point or not. +Valgrind (and other test tools) will complain whatsoever. When +using Valgrind, make sure to use an OpenSSL library that has been +compiled with the PEDANTIC macro being defined (-DPEDANTIC) to +get rid of these warnings. Compling with -DPURIFY will help as well. + +The PEDANTIC macro was added in OpenSSL 0.9.8f. + + ===============================================================================