Re: [2.6 patch] i386: always use 4k stacks

Jeff V. Merkey
2005-11-15T04:37:30Z

Robert Hancock wrote:

> Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>> What? There's more kernel apps than just ndis network drivers that
>> get ported. ndiswrapper is busted (which is used for a lot of laptops)
>> without 4K stacks.
>
>
> Which is why ndiswrapper needs to get fixed to work with 4K stacks.
> ndiswrapper is the thing that's doing the wierd stuff, it needs to
> adapt to the kernel, not the other way around. The reasons to use 4K
> stacks are strong enough that they are not made up for by the fact
> that ndiswrapper currently would like to have more stack space.

The NDIS drivers require the 8K stack, not ndiswrapper.

>
> Windows apparently has 12K of kernel stack for drivers.. in that case
> even 8K of stack in Linux would not necessarily be enough. If
> ndiswrapper wants to run Windows code in the kernel with any amount of
> reliability it should be providing its own stack which is the size
> that the code expects.
>
>> My laptop is a Compaq and there isn't a Linux driver for the
>> wireless. I also discovered Fedora Core 4 won't install
>> on a Compaq Presario with SATA (stacks crashes).
>
>
> How do you know this is related to the stack? Did you report this as a
> bug?

Because I use MDB, a kernel debugger I wrote that inserts beneath Linux
via DRLX or inside of it, and I watched it crash in the Linux SCSI
code. There's code in Linux proper that also walks off the end of the
stack. No I did not report it. But now I have.

Jeff