Subj : Re: Best possible stack size for a thread
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : Simon Bone
Date : Sat Sep 17 2005 12:52 pm

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 00:16:20 -0700, jambu wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I went thru the links , but they do not point me to the required
> information . Even thou there is no harm in the memory being large ,
> iam eager to know is there any way to compute the memory consumption of
> the thread. But why should the memory be wasted without being used ??
> 

The memory won't be wasted. Linux uses a virtual memory system and
allocates pages of (typically) 4KB at a time. For the pages you use, you
will get them assigned to your process, but for those you don't no real
allocation will happen.

All you are getting by default is 2MB of addresses *reserved* for use as
the thread stack. That will be plenty for most uses, and so the most
likely causes if you get stack overrun is a non-terminated recursion or a
buffer overflow. I.e. programmer errors. You don't normally need to reduce
the stack size, unless you want to stress test your application.

Regards

Simon Bone

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