I have noticed that the kernel stack space in Linux is very small-- only 5300-odd bytes with the x86_64 kernel that I'm using right now. I have run into problems with this, most notably with the deeply- nested and recursive ACPI "driver" code. When I mentioned enlarging the kernel stack on the linux-kernel mailing list, I got a lot of responses that indicated that increasing the kernel stack is a bad idea. I've also heard that the stack is going down to only 4K soon.
My question is: Why is Linux bothering to try to get by with such a small kernel stack? Just to save page table entries/TLBs? If this is the reason, is the kernel code put into 2M/4M pages to save page table entries and TLBs? If not, why not? Also, I'm kind of curious why the task_struct is put in the stack area, just begging to get overwritten without warning in the case of a stack overflow... and why isn't the stack segment in it's own protected segment, such that a stack overflow will result in an exception of some sort? Any insight would be appreciated! Thanks Stuart - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
