id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	resolution	keywords	cc	uname	nginx_version
1403	nginx module cannot use libpcre	andwei@…		"Using the rrdgraph module [https://github.com/evanmiller/mod_rrd_graph], and with glib having switched to using the libpcre system library, I found that libpcre becomes unusable for that module (and theoretically for all other modules, too), because src/core/ngx_regex sets pcre_malloc = ngx_regex_malloc. This, of course works for ngx_regex_compile, which initializes the pool used by ngx_regex_malloc and clears it after regex compilation.

libpcre error message:
{{{
cannot compile regular expression: Error while compiling regular expression ^(?:[^%]+|%%)*%[-+ 0#]?[0-9]*(?:[.][0-9]+)?l[eEfFgG](?:[^%]+|%%)*(?:%s)?(?:[^%]+|%%)*$ at char 86: failed to get memory (^(?:[^%]+|%%)*%[-+ 0#]?[0-9]*(?:[.][0-9]+)?l[eEfFgG](?:[^%]+|%%)*(?:%s)?(?:[^%]+|%%)*$)
}}}

For an nginx module (in our case compiled statically into nginx), this means, however, that using libpcre regex compilation is no longer possible, because ngx_regex_malloc does not have any buffer available when called from somewhere else.

What first came to my mind was to just exchange the allocation mechanism before calling the rrdlibrary and change it back afterwards, but I'm quite sure this would get me into serious multithreading trouble.

Globally changing the pcre_malloc to standard malloc is probably even worse due to the allocated memory not being cleaned up, because this is usually done by the pools (right?) and also probably decreasing performance.

Any ideas on how to solve this without doing any damage?

A working alternative is to use the glib's embedded libpcre, but this is quite outdated and judging from [https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=740573] will be removed soon."	defect	closed	minor		nginx-core	1.10.x	wontfix			Linux <somename> 4.9.45-yocto-custom #3 SMP Wed Sep 27 14:10:54 CEST 2017 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux	configure arguments: --with-ipv6 --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_auth_request_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_v2_module --with-cc='i586-poky-linux-gcc -Wl,--hash-style=gnu -DNGX_ENABLE_SYSLOG' --with-pcre --sbin-path=/usr/sbin/nginx --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid --lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx_error --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx_access --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/client_body_temp --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy_temp --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi_temp --http-uwsgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/uwsgi_temp --http-scgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/scgi_temp --add-module=../rrdgraph --add-module=../echomod --with-cc='i586-poky-linux-gcc -m32 -march=i586 --sysroot=<some-sysroot> -Wl,-O1 -Wl,--hash-style=gnu -Wl,--as-needed'