tim at home work and in between.

Several folks have asked when should a program set the stack size rlimit.. just before exec() is the only sensible point.

Once your process has started up things have been mapped just below the reserved stack space, the size of which is the value of the stack space resource limit at the time the program assembled its address space ( ie during exec).

lets use pmpa and have a look..

 ulimit -S -s 20000
ulimit -S -s
20000
 sleep 20 & pmap $!
2460:   sleep 20
00010000       8K r-x--  /usr/bin/sleep
00022000       8K rwx--  /usr/bin/sleep
00024000       8K rwx--    [ heap ]
FE700000     864K r-x--  /lib/libc.so.1
FE7E8000      32K rwx--  /lib/libc.so.1
FE7F0000       8K rwx--  /lib/libc.so.1
FE810000       8K r-x--  /platform/sun4u-us3/lib/libc_psr.so.1
FE820000      24K rwx--    [ anon ]
FE830000     184K r-x--  /lib/ld.so.1
FE86E000       8K rwx--  /lib/ld.so.1
FE870000       8K rwx--  /lib/ld.so.1
FFBFE000       8K rw---    [ stack ]
 total      1168K

mdb

> (FFBFE000-FE870000)%0t1024=D
                20024           
> 

so the first shared library ld.so.1 has been mapped below the reserved swap space.

ulimit -S -s 200000
ulimit -S -s
200000
sleep 20 & pmap $!
[1]     2463
2463:   sleep 20
00010000       8K r-x--  /usr/bin/sleep
00022000       8K rwx--  /usr/bin/sleep
00024000       8K rwx--    [ heap ]
F3700000     864K r-x--  /lib/libc.so.1
F37E8000      32K rwx--  /lib/libc.so.1
F37F0000       8K rwx--  /lib/libc.so.1
F3840000       8K r-x--  /platform/sun4u-us3/lib/libc_psr.so.1
F3850000      24K rwx--    [ anon ]
F3860000     184K r-x--  /lib/ld.so.1
F389E000       8K rwx--  /lib/ld.so.1
F38A0000       8K rwx--  /lib/ld.so.1
FFBFE000       8K rw---    [ stack ]
 total      1168K

 mdb

> (FFBFE000-F38A0000)%0t1024=D
                200056          
> 

So if I use setrlimit to change the current stack space setting to a bigger number then all future mappings will be pushed down below that reserved space but existing mappings won't move, and if your stack tries to grow over them you will get a segv signal. So you should only ever increase the stack size rlimit just before a call to exec().

This stack size will only affect the default stack for the main thread in a process, the stack for other threads are sized at thread_create() time either using the default 1MB or a program specified amount.