process stack handling on XENIX-286

Steve Dyer dyer at spdcc.UUCP
Thu Feb 20 17:52:46 AEST 1986


I'm still a bit confused about how a process grows (or blows) its
stack under XENIX-286.  To be specific, I'm talking about SCO XENIX V
for the PC/AT.  I can understand why an unprotected machine like the
808[86] requires stack to be pre-allocated, but it would seem to me
that the memory protection facilities of the 286 would allow dynamic
stack growth much like the PDP-11 or VAX families.  Nevertheless, the
XENIX documentation still alludes to constructs like
cc -F hex-number-of-stack-size ...
Is this just a cautious remnant of 8086 compatibility, or is this
still necessary when running objects on a 286 machine running XENIX, too.

Thanks,
-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer at harvard.HARVARD.EDU
{bbncca,bbnccv,harvard}!spdcc!dyer



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