Bug#343853: Bug in glibc: setrlimit

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 04:31:52AM -0500, Gene Cooperman wrote:
> The details of the bug are in BUG-glibc/README in the tarball.  In brief,
> using setrlimit on RLIM_STACK, I set rlim_max to RLIM_INFINITY and rlim_cur
> to something unnaturally high (e.g. 2 GB).  I then call
>  system("./pthread"), where pthread is a program that calls
>  pthread_create().  pthread_create() then fails and the pthread process returns:pthread: Cannot allocate memory
> pthread: pthread.c:22: main: Assertion `0 == pthread_retval' failed.

This sounds to me like a feature, not a bug.  If the rlimit is
unlimited a default is used; otherwise, it is used as the stack size
for new threads.  This happens during program initialization, before
main is called.

If you need a different stack size than your non-infinite RLIM_STACK
setting, you can specify the stack size explicitly when you create the
thread.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC