How do the heap manager and the heap work on Linux ?

[Barberis]

Hi. I'm looking for the information about the users process heap structure under Linux as well as how the heap manager works.

What do I need for example:

- how does the heap work generally;
- how do segments work;
- the description of segments metadata;
- are there any Look-aside-list and front end / back end allocators like on Windows and how do they work;
- what C-structures are used (I need that for debugging of my applications if there are any problems with dynamically allocated memory);
- the description of how heap manager works;
- and so on.

Why do I need that:

1. For my applicaitons debugging after the crash using a "core dump" file which I load in GDB.
2. Curious about all of that

I know there are a lot of useful stuff like Valgrind and other tools, but in this case I'm interested in doing that by hand rather than to use any tool to do that for me, because when I work with core dump file, I only have a process image which I can analyse. And to do that I need to know how does it work, because the call stack is not always a something that can help (actual crash may occur long after the actual heap corruption).

Thanks !

[Rubberman]

See The Linux Kernel Archives and The Linux Documentation Project for documentation on this sort of stuff.