Readdir/closedir - Valgrind shows "invalid read"

Question

Posting snippets of my code here. I am trying to get a footing around debugging.

struct dirent *s_dirent;
char path[300];
....
bzero(path,300);
...
fd_dir = opendir(path);
while((s_dirent = readdir(fd_dir))!=NULL)
{
     if(s_dirent->d_name[0] == '.')
          continue;
     else
          break;
 }
if(s_dirent == NULL)
{
   if(closedir(fd_dir)!=0)
       perror("Error on closedir");
 }
else
{

  if(closedir(fd_dir)!=0)/*Line number 249*/
      perror("Error on closedir");

  /*some comments*/
  strcat(path,"/");
  strcat(path,s_dirent->d_name);/*Line number 254*/
 }

Valgrind output:

==3287== Invalid read of size 1
==3287==    at 0x40069E0: strcat (mc_replace_strmem.c:176)
==3287==    by 0x804D6B4: online_bck (backup_manager.c:254)
==3287==    by 0x8049F96: on_bck_beg (TxFS_manager.c:181)
==3287==    by 0x8049818: handler (Reader.c:236)
==3287==    by 0xBF5F18: start_thread (in /lib/libpthread-2.12.90.so)
==3287==    by 0xB37A2D: clone (in /lib/libc-2.12.90.so)
==3287==  Address 0x402a39b is 35 bytes inside a block of size 32,792 free'd
==3287==    at 0x40057F6: free (vg_replace_malloc.c:325)
==3287==    by 0xAF6C67: closedir (in /lib/libc-2.12.90.so)
==3287==    by 0x804D65A: online_bck (backup_manager.c:249)
==3287==    by 0x8049F96: on_bck_beg (TxFS_manager.c:181)
==3287==    by 0x8049818: handler (Reader.c:236)
==3287==    by 0xBF5F18: start_thread (in /lib/libpthread-2.12.90.so)
==3287==    by 0xB37A2D: clone (in /lib/libc-2.12.90.so)

Any help will be highly appreciated. Thanks

Answer 1

You should not access data, returned by readdir() after calling a closedir(). This is because closedir() may free any resources (e.g. memory), allocated in opendir/readdir.

If you want to save dirent* struct, you can switch to readdir_r variant of readdir (with different set of parameters).

UPDATE: Decoding of Valgrind output:

        V - note single space here; it is beginning of error message. 
==3287== Invalid read of size 1
==3287==    at 0x40069E0: strcat (mc_replace_strmem.c:176)

 backtrace skipped

Valgrind says that error is Reading of invalid data, sized 1 byte, which is not a Memory Leak. It is incorrect memory access. And the actor of this read is the strcat() (called by skipped backtrace). Why the data is invalid? There is submessage

        VV - note two spaces here, it is continuation of error message
==3287==  Address 0x402a39b is 35 bytes inside a block of size 32,792 free'd
==3287==    at 0x40057F6: free (vg_replace_malloc.c:325)
==3287==    by 0xAF6C67: closedir (in /lib/libc-2.12.90.so)

The byte is invalid (not allowed to be read from) because it is part of memory segment which was free-d (you can't read from the memory you just free-d). Whom did this? Look at backtrace: closedir was the caller of free.