> > > Perhaps I'm mangling terminology. LinuxThreads is a one-to-one mapping > > > of kernel threads to user threads. All the kernel threads, and thus > > > all the user threads, share the same memory region - including the > > > stack region. Their stacks are differentiated solely by different > > > values in the stack pointer register. Thus I don't think what you're > > > suggesting is possible. > > > > I don't see how fork() semantics can be preserved unless > > the stack regions are replicated (copy-on-write) on a fork(). > > Under ATT and BSD Unix (which is where I did most of > > my kernel hacking in the old days) that was the *only* > > way to get a new kernel thread, so it was "obvious" > > that my proposed hack would work. Linux does have > > the clone() function as well, and if LinuxThreads are > > implemented in terms of clone(foo, stakptr, CLONE_VM, arg), > > you are correct, the proposed scheme would not work > > without modification. > > Which it is. Fork shares no memory regions; Oh, come on. If it doesn't share text regions, it's completely brain dead! > vfork/clone share all memory regions. AFAIK there is no > share-heap-but-not-stack option in Linux. Yeah. Not that it matters, but I had misremebered there being finer grained control than that on clone(). Probably confused it with something that someone overlaid on Mach once upon a time... Anyway, do you see a hole or a serious performance problem with my modified proposal (explicit mmap() to create the necessary storage)? Regards, Kevin K.