tsdb: fix memory leaks in buffer pools#17879
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Clear reference fields when returning buffers to pools to avoid retaining data after the buffer is reused. Affected pools: - refSeriesPool: clear Labels - histogramsPool: clear H pointer - floatHistogramsPool: clear FH pointer - metadataPool: clear Unit and Help strings Signed-off-by: Arve Knudsen <[email protected]>
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bboreham
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Jan 19, 2026
Signed-off-by: Arve Knudsen <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Arve Knudsen <[email protected]>
bboreham
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Note similar changes were done in #13712; the other pools were added since.
I don't think the tests are worth checking in and adding over a hundred lines of bulk. They are testing internal details of the implementation of something that is quite obvious.
And only covering half the pools.
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Signed-off-by: Arve Knudsen <[email protected]>
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##### [\`v3.10.0\`](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/tag/v3.10.0) Prometheus now offers a distroless Docker image variant alongside the default busybox image. The distroless variant provides enhanced security with a minimal base image, uses UID/GID 65532 (nonroot) instead of nobody, and removes the VOLUME declaration. Both variants are available with `-busybox` and `-distroless` tag suffixes (e.g., `prom/prometheus:latest-busybox`, `prom/prometheus:latest-distroless`). The busybox image remains the default with no suffix for backwards compatibility (e.g., `prom/prometheus:latest` points to the busybox variant). For users migrating existing **named** volumes from the busybox image to the distroless variant, the ownership can be adjusted with: ``` docker run --rm -v prometheus-data:/prometheus alpine chown -R 65532:65532 /prometheus ``` Then, the container can be started with the old volume with: ``` docker run -v prometheus-data:/prometheus prom/prometheus:latest-distroless ``` User migrating from bind mounts might need to ajust permissions too, depending on their setup. - \[CHANGE] Alerting: Add `alertmanager` dimension to following metrics: `prometheus_notifications_dropped_total`, `prometheus_notifications_queue_capacity`, `prometheus_notifications_queue_length`. [#16355](prometheus/prometheus#16355) - \[CHANGE] UI: Hide expanded alert annotations by default, enabling more information density on the `/alerts` page. [#17611](prometheus/prometheus#17611) - \[FEATURE] AWS SD: Add MSK Role. [#17600](prometheus/prometheus#17600) - \[FEATURE] PromQL: Add `fill()` / `fill_left()` / `fill_right()` binop modifiers for specifying default values for missing series. [#17644](prometheus/prometheus#17644) - \[FEATURE] Web: Add OpenAPI 3.2 specification for the HTTP API at `/api/v1/openapi.yaml`. [#17825](prometheus/prometheus#17825) - \[FEATURE] Dockerfile: Add distroless image variant using UID/GID 65532 and no VOLUME declaration. Busybox image remains default. [#17876](prometheus/prometheus#17876) - \[FEATURE] Web: Add on-demand wall time profiling under `<URL>/debug/pprof/fgprof`. [#18027](prometheus/prometheus#18027) - \[ENHANCEMENT] PromQL: Add more detail to histogram quantile monotonicity info annotations. [#15578](prometheus/prometheus#15578) - \[ENHANCEMENT] Alerting: Independent alertmanager sendloops. [#16355](prometheus/prometheus#16355) - \[ENHANCEMENT] TSDB: Experimental support for early compaction of stale series in the memory with configurable threshold `stale_series_compaction_threshold` in the config file. [#16929](prometheus/prometheus#16929) - \[ENHANCEMENT] Service Discovery: Service discoveries are now removable from the Prometheus binary through the Go build tag `remove_all_sd` and individual service discoveries can be re-added with the build tags `enable_<sd name>_sd`. Users can build a custom Prometheus with only the necessary SDs for a smaller binary size. [#17736](prometheus/prometheus#17736) - \[ENHANCEMENT] Promtool: Support promql syntax features `promql-duration-expr` and `promql-extended-range-selectors`. [#17926](prometheus/prometheus#17926) - \[PERF] PromQL: Avoid unnecessary label extraction in PromQL functions. [#17676](prometheus/prometheus#17676) - \[PERF] PromQL: Improve performance of regex matchers like `.*-.*-.*`. [#17707](prometheus/prometheus#17707) - \[PERF] OTLP: Add label caching for OTLP-to-Prometheus conversion to reduce allocations and improve latency. [#17860](prometheus/prometheus#17860) - \[PERF] API: Compute `/api/v1/targets/relabel_steps` in a single pass instead of re-running relabeling for each prefix. [#17969](prometheus/prometheus#17969) - \[PERF] tsdb: Optimize LabelValues intersection performance for matchers. [#18069](prometheus/prometheus#18069) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Prevent query strings containing only UTF-8 continuation bytes from crashing Prometheus. [#17735](prometheus/prometheus#17735) - \[BUGFIX] Web: Fix missing `X-Prometheus-Stopping` header for `/-/ready` endpoint in `NotReady` state. [#17795](prometheus/prometheus#17795) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix PromQL `info()` function returning empty results when filtering by a label that exists on both the input metric and `target_info`. [#17817](prometheus/prometheus#17817) - \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix a bug during exemplar buffer grow/shrink that could cause exemplars to be incorrectly discarded. [#17863](prometheus/prometheus#17863) - \[BUGFIX] UI: Fix broken graph display after page reload, due to broken Y axis min encoding/decoding. [#17869](prometheus/prometheus#17869) - \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix memory leaks in buffer pools by clearing reference fields (Labels, Histogram pointers, metadata strings) before returning buffers to pools. [#17879](prometheus/prometheus#17879) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: info function: fix series without identifying labels not being returned. [#17898](prometheus/prometheus#17898) - \[BUGFIX] OTLP: Filter `__name__` from OTLP attributes to prevent duplicate labels. [#17917](prometheus/prometheus#17917) - \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix division by zero when computing stale series ratio with empty head. [#17952](prometheus/prometheus#17952) - \[BUGFIX] OTLP: Fix potential silent data loss for sum metrics. [#17954](prometheus/prometheus#17954) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix smoothed interpolation across counter resets. [#17988](prometheus/prometheus#17988) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix panic with `@` modifier on empty ranges. [#18020](prometheus/prometheus#18020) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix `avg_over_time` for a single native histogram. [#18058](prometheus/prometheus#18058)
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##### [\`v3.10.0\`](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/tag/v3.10.0) Prometheus now offers a distroless Docker image variant alongside the default busybox image. The distroless variant provides enhanced security with a minimal base image, uses UID/GID 65532 (nonroot) instead of nobody, and removes the VOLUME declaration. Both variants are available with `-busybox` and `-distroless` tag suffixes (e.g., `prom/prometheus:latest-busybox`, `prom/prometheus:latest-distroless`). The busybox image remains the default with no suffix for backwards compatibility (e.g., `prom/prometheus:latest` points to the busybox variant). For users migrating existing **named** volumes from the busybox image to the distroless variant, the ownership can be adjusted with: ``` docker run --rm -v prometheus-data:/prometheus alpine chown -R 65532:65532 /prometheus ``` Then, the container can be started with the old volume with: ``` docker run -v prometheus-data:/prometheus prom/prometheus:latest-distroless ``` User migrating from bind mounts might need to ajust permissions too, depending on their setup. - \[CHANGE] Alerting: Add `alertmanager` dimension to following metrics: `prometheus_notifications_dropped_total`, `prometheus_notifications_queue_capacity`, `prometheus_notifications_queue_length`. [#16355](prometheus/prometheus#16355) - \[CHANGE] UI: Hide expanded alert annotations by default, enabling more information density on the `/alerts` page. [#17611](prometheus/prometheus#17611) - \[FEATURE] AWS SD: Add MSK Role. [#17600](prometheus/prometheus#17600) - \[FEATURE] PromQL: Add `fill()` / `fill_left()` / `fill_right()` binop modifiers for specifying default values for missing series. [#17644](prometheus/prometheus#17644) - \[FEATURE] Web: Add OpenAPI 3.2 specification for the HTTP API at `/api/v1/openapi.yaml`. [#17825](prometheus/prometheus#17825) - \[FEATURE] Dockerfile: Add distroless image variant using UID/GID 65532 and no VOLUME declaration. Busybox image remains default. [#17876](prometheus/prometheus#17876) - \[FEATURE] Web: Add on-demand wall time profiling under `<URL>/debug/pprof/fgprof`. [#18027](prometheus/prometheus#18027) - \[ENHANCEMENT] PromQL: Add more detail to histogram quantile monotonicity info annotations. [#15578](prometheus/prometheus#15578) - \[ENHANCEMENT] Alerting: Independent alertmanager sendloops. [#16355](prometheus/prometheus#16355) - \[ENHANCEMENT] TSDB: Experimental support for early compaction of stale series in the memory with configurable threshold `stale_series_compaction_threshold` in the config file. [#16929](prometheus/prometheus#16929) - \[ENHANCEMENT] Service Discovery: Service discoveries are now removable from the Prometheus binary through the Go build tag `remove_all_sd` and individual service discoveries can be re-added with the build tags `enable_<sd name>_sd`. Users can build a custom Prometheus with only the necessary SDs for a smaller binary size. [#17736](prometheus/prometheus#17736) - \[ENHANCEMENT] Promtool: Support promql syntax features `promql-duration-expr` and `promql-extended-range-selectors`. [#17926](prometheus/prometheus#17926) - \[PERF] PromQL: Avoid unnecessary label extraction in PromQL functions. [#17676](prometheus/prometheus#17676) - \[PERF] PromQL: Improve performance of regex matchers like `.*-.*-.*`. [#17707](prometheus/prometheus#17707) - \[PERF] OTLP: Add label caching for OTLP-to-Prometheus conversion to reduce allocations and improve latency. [#17860](prometheus/prometheus#17860) - \[PERF] API: Compute `/api/v1/targets/relabel_steps` in a single pass instead of re-running relabeling for each prefix. [#17969](prometheus/prometheus#17969) - \[PERF] tsdb: Optimize LabelValues intersection performance for matchers. [#18069](prometheus/prometheus#18069) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Prevent query strings containing only UTF-8 continuation bytes from crashing Prometheus. [#17735](prometheus/prometheus#17735) - \[BUGFIX] Web: Fix missing `X-Prometheus-Stopping` header for `/-/ready` endpoint in `NotReady` state. [#17795](prometheus/prometheus#17795) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix PromQL `info()` function returning empty results when filtering by a label that exists on both the input metric and `target_info`. [#17817](prometheus/prometheus#17817) - \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix a bug during exemplar buffer grow/shrink that could cause exemplars to be incorrectly discarded. [#17863](prometheus/prometheus#17863) - \[BUGFIX] UI: Fix broken graph display after page reload, due to broken Y axis min encoding/decoding. [#17869](prometheus/prometheus#17869) - \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix memory leaks in buffer pools by clearing reference fields (Labels, Histogram pointers, metadata strings) before returning buffers to pools. [#17879](prometheus/prometheus#17879) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: info function: fix series without identifying labels not being returned. [#17898](prometheus/prometheus#17898) - \[BUGFIX] OTLP: Filter `__name__` from OTLP attributes to prevent duplicate labels. [#17917](prometheus/prometheus#17917) - \[BUGFIX] TSDB: Fix division by zero when computing stale series ratio with empty head. [#17952](prometheus/prometheus#17952) - \[BUGFIX] OTLP: Fix potential silent data loss for sum metrics. [#17954](prometheus/prometheus#17954) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix smoothed interpolation across counter resets. [#17988](prometheus/prometheus#17988) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix panic with `@` modifier on empty ranges. [#18020](prometheus/prometheus#18020) - \[BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix `avg_over_time` for a single native histogram. [#18058](prometheus/prometheus#18058)
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Summary
refSeriesPool: clearLabelsfieldhistogramsPool: clearHpointerfloatHistogramsPool: clearFHpointermetadataPool: clearUnitandHelpstringsWithout these fixes, the pooled buffers retain references to data that should be garbage collected, causing memory to accumulate over time.
This established pattern, of clearing references before pool re-use, is already followed in
Head.putExemplarBuffer,Head.putSeriesBufferandHead.putTypeMap. The former two were fixed in #13712.Test plan