How programmatically get Linux process's stack start and end address?

Question

For a mono threaded program, I want to check whether or not a given virtual address is in the process\'s stack. I want to do that inside the process which is written in C.

Answer 1

My answer is for linux on x64 with kernel 3.12.23 only. It might or might not apply to aother versions or architectures.

(1)+(2) I'm not sure here, but I believe it is as Gil Hamilton said before.

(3) You can see the amount in /proc/pid/maps (or /proc/self/maps if you target the calling process). However not all of that it actually useable as stack for your application. Argument- (argv[]) and environment vectors (__environ[]) usually consume quite a bit of space at the bottom (highest address) of that area.

To actually find the area the kernel designated as "stack" for your application, you can have a look at /proc/self/stat. Its values are documented here. As you can see, there is a field for "startstack". Together with the size of the mapped area, you can compute the current amount of stack reserved. Along with "kstkesp", you could determine the amount of free stack space or actually used stack space (keep in mind that any operation done by your thread most likely will change those values).

Also note, that this works only for the processes main thread! Other threads won't get a labled "[stack]" mapping, but either use anonymous mappings or might even end up on the heap. (Use pthreads API to find those values, or remember the stack-start in the threads main function).

(4) As explained in (3), you solution is mostly OK, but not entirely accurate.

Answer 2

Lots of the stack setup details depend on which architecture you're running on, executable format, and various kernel configuration options (stack pointer randomization, 4GB address space for i386, etc).

At the time the process is exec'd, the kernel picks a default stack top (for example, on the traditional i386 arch it's 0xc0000000, i.e. the end of the user-mode area of the virtual address space).

The type of executable format (ELF vs a.out, etc) can in theory change the initial stack top. Any additional stack randomization and any other fixups are then done (for example, the vdso [system call springboard] area generally is put here, when used). Now you have an actual initial top of stack.

The kernel now allocates whatever space is needed to construct argument and environment vectors and so forth for the process, initializes the stack pointer, creates initial register values, and initiates the process. I believe this provides the answer for (3): i.e. the kernel allocates only enough space to contain the argument and environment vectors, other pages are allocated on demand.

Other answers, as best as I can tell:

(1) When a process attempts to store data in the area below the current bottom of the stack region, a page fault is generated. The kernel fault handler determines where the next populated virtual memory region within the process' virtual address space begins. It then looks at what type of area that is. If it's a "grows down" area (at least on x86, all stack regions should be marked grows-down), and if the process' stack pointer (ESP/RSP) value at the time of the fault is less than the bottom of that region and if the process hasn't exceeded the ulimit -s setting, and the new size of the region wouldn't collide with another region, then it's assumed to be a valid attempt to grow the stack and additional pages are allocated to satisfy the process.

(2) Not 100% sure, but I don't think there's any attempt to shrink stack areas. Presumably normal LRU page sweeping would be performed making now-unused areas candidates for paging out to the swap area if they're really not being re-used.

(4) Your plan seems reasonable to me: the /proc/NN/maps should get start and end addresses for the stack region as a whole. This would be the largest your stack has ever been, I think. The current actual working stack area OTOH should reside between your current stack pointer and the end of the region (ordinarily nothing should be using the area of the stack below the stack pointer).