Understanding valgrind output

Question

I am new to Linux. How can I interpret the following output from Valgrind?

valgrind --tool=memcheck --leak-check=yes ./main

It says some blocks are lost. How can I nail down memory leaks?

==2599== HEAP SUMMARY:
==2599==     in use at exit: 17,327 bytes in 55 blocks
==2599==   total heap usage: 180,597 allocs, 180,542 frees, 15,787,989,675 bytes allocated
==2599==
==2599== 9 bytes in 1 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 5 of 19
==2599==    at 0x4025BD3: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:236)
==2599==    by 0x41E546F: strdup (strdup.c:43)
==2599==    by 0x804BA2A: Schema::Schema(char*, char*) (Schema.cc:86)
==2599==    by 0x804AD78: CNF::GrowFromParseTree(AndList*, Schema*, Record&) (Comparison.cc:606)
==2599==    by 0x804EE52: main (main.cc:28)
==2599==
==2599== 10 bytes in 2 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 6 of 19
==2599==    at 0x4025BD3: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:236)
==2599==    by 0x41E546F: strdup (strdup.c:43)
==2599==    by 0x804BB84: Schema::Schema(char*, char*) (Schema.cc:115)
==2599==    by 0x804AD78: CNF::GrowFromParseTree(AndList*, Schema*, Record&) (Comparison.cc:606)
==2599==    by 0x804EE52: main (main.cc:28)
==2599==
==2599== 13 bytes in 1 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 9 of 19
==2599==    at 0x4025BD3: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:236)
==2599==    by 0x41E546F: strdup (strdup.c:43)
==2599==    by 0x804BA2A: Schema::Schema(char*, char*) (Schema.cc:86)
==2599==    by 0x804EDF4: main (main.cc:23)
==2599==
==2599== 13 bytes in 1 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 10 of 19
==2599==    at 0x4025BD3: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:236)
==2599==    by 0x41E546F: strdup (strdup.c:43)
==2599==    by 0x804BA2A: Schema::Schema(char*, char*) (Schema.cc:86)
==2599==    by 0x804EEA4: main (main.cc:37)
==2599==
==2599== 188 bytes in 16 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 16 of 19
==2599==    at 0x4025BD3: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:236)
==2599==    by 0x41E546F: strdup (strdup.c:43)
==2599==    by 0x804BB84: Schema::Schema(char*, char*) (Schema.cc:115)
==2599==    by 0x804EDF4: main (main.cc:23)
==2599==
==2599== 188 bytes in 16 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 17 of 19
==2599==    at 0x4025BD3: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:236)
==2599==    by 0x41E546F: strdup (strdup.c:43)
==2599==    by 0x804BB84: Schema::Schema(char*, char*) (Schema.cc:115)
==2599==    by 0x804EEA4: main (main.cc:37)
==2599==
==2599== LEAK SUMMARY:
==2599==    definitely lost: 421 bytes in 37 blocks
==2599==    indirectly lost: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
==2599==      possibly lost: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
==2599==    still reachable: 16,906 bytes in 18 blocks
==2599==         suppressed: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
==2599== Reachable blocks (those to which a pointer was found) are not shown.
==2599== To see them, rerun with: --leak-check=full --show-reachable=yes
==2599==
==2599== For counts of detected and suppressed errors, rerun with: -v
==2599== ERROR SUMMARY: 6 errors from 6 contexts (suppressed: 19 from 8)

Answer 1

The output shows the stack for where the leaked (and lost, i.e., no pointers to which remain) memory was allocated, in lines 86 and 115 of Schema.cc (an strdup call).