refCnt() is 1 but internally 2?

I found a memory leak in my software and wanted to fix it. The problem is, that I’m not shure where the refCnt really is:

if i realease the byteBufMessage after adding the message to the list object, I get an error that the refcnt already is 0.

my inbound stack: SSLHandler -> Websocket -> Some custom handler my outbound stack MessageToMessageEncoder -> IdleStateHandler

[konsultaner]

@njhill Thank you very much. Its not trivial to have everything leak free. Helped me a lot!

[njhill]

@konsultaner the raw value of the internal refCnt field itself is not the actual ref count, as warned by the comment next to it:

// Value might not equal "real" reference count, all access should be via the updater

The mapping is described here: https://github.com/netty/netty/blob/4.1/common/src/main/java/io/netty/util/internal/ReferenceCountUpdater.java#L32-L34. So 2 here really means a ref count of 1.