Increasing stack size of child threads on solaris for pthreads

Question

I am trying to increase stacksize of pthreads using the following code snippet:

 size_t newstacksz = 0xf000;
 void * arg = 0;
 int ret = pthread_attr_setstacksize(&attr, newstacksz);
 if (ret == -1) {
   std::cout << "Attempt to increase thread stack size failed, resorting to default" << endl;
   ret = pthread_attr_setstacksize(&attr, 0); // minimum allowable
 }
 pthread_attr_setdetachstate(&attr,PTHREAD_CREATE_JOINABLE);
 pthread_attr_setscope(&attr, PTHREAD_SCOPE_SYSTEM);  // system-wide contention
 ret = pthread_create(&tid,&attr,thrfn,arg);
 pthread_attr_destroy(&attr);

Can I get an estimate about maximum allowable stacksize per thread if I to create multiple worker threads?

Answer 1

pthreads doesn't have a notion of maximum stack size. So there's no way to ask pthread to give a thread the "maximum allowable" stack size. There's also no way to ask pthread for a recommended maximum allowable stack size for a known set of threads.

What a suitable (maximum?) stack size is for your particular application depends on so many things: machine, OS, available memory, expected load, expected stack consumption etc., so it's really no wonder pthreads can't tell you. I can't either.

You'll have to figure out, somehow, what the proper stack size is yourself.