4K stacks by default?

Posted Apr 24, 2008 12:42 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (guest, #24648)
In reply to: 4K stacks by default? by bronson
Parent article: 4K stacks by default?

Is four years of talking about 4K stacks enough? You can prepare and prepare for decades and still not be certain you've caught everything. There comes a time when you just the switch and fix anything that breaks. I hope that time is soon.

Having read Jake's article, I was under the impression that the bigger issue wasn't about the impact of defaulting to 4K stacks, but rather how the patch submission showed a total disregard for the following the established procedure. IMO this smacks of some ulterior motive of trying to "sneak" by the senior kernel developers, especially given the controversy of the patch. But then again, I often entertain harebrained conspiracy theories, so don't mind me. ;-)

I do agree with your comment, though.

Here's a different, more constructive conspiracy theory: Perhaps the submitter knew full well that this patch would be caught despite the clandestine technique used, and he/she wanted to stimulate a discussion on defaulting to 4K stacks--after all, four years is a long time to keep this patch in mainline only to have it disabled by default. Of course, this wouldn't explain why the submitter didn't just announce the change and ask for comments on the LKML...

I've run 4K stacks on vanilla kernels for several years now without any issues, even with proprietary NVIDIA graphics drivers (I know, I know!). I do remember having to keep 8K stacks on my laptop prior to 2.6.17 with a Broadcomm Wifi card and NDISWrapper (need I say more?).