Is it possible to predict a stack overflow in C on Linux?

Question

There are certain conditions that can cause stack overflows on an x86 Linux system:

• struct my_big_object[HUGE_NUMBER] on the stack. Walking throu

Answer 1

Even if this isn't a direct answer to your question, I hope you're aware of the existence of valgrind - a wonderful tool for detecting such problems in runtime, on Linux.

Regarding the stack problem, you can attempt allocating objects dynamically from a fixed pool that detects these overflows. With a simple macro-wizardry you can make this run at debug time, with real code running at release time, and thus know (at least for the scenarios you're executing) that you're not taking too much. Here's more info and a link to a sample implementation.