Re: top stack (l)users for 2.5.69

[Jesse Pollard <jesse@cats-chateau.net>]

On Wednesday 07 May 2003 16:54, Timothy Miller wrote:
> Jesse Pollard wrote:
> > On Wednesday 07 May 2003 12:13, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
> > [snip]
> >
> >>One thing that would help (aside from separate interrupt stacks)
> >>would be a guard page below the stack. That wouldn't require any
> >>physical memory to be reserved, and would provide positive indication
> >>of stack overflow without significant runtime overhead.
> >
> > It does take up a page table entry, which may also be in short supply
>
> Now, I'm sure this has GOT to be a terribly ignorant question, but I'll
> try anyhow:
>
> What happens if you simply neglect to provide a mapping for that page?
> I'm sure that will cause some sort of page fault.  Why would you have to
> do something different?

I believe it shifts the entire virtual range up(/down depending on your point
of view). Each page in the virtual address range (whether it physically
exists or not) has a descriptor. To reserve one requires that the descriptor
be set to "does not exist, no read, no write". Then any access to that page
can/will generate a trap.