Re: execve manpage changes

From: Michael Kerrisk
Date: Tue Aug 07 2007 - 17:38:55 EST


Ollie Wild wrote:
Michael,

Per our previous discussion, here are the updates to the execve(2)
manpage resulting from the variable length argument support patch in
linux-2.6.23-rc1. The execve API is unmodified. However, the
following should be noted in the "Notes" section.

Prior to linux-2.6.23, the memory used to store the environment and
argument list strings was limited to 32 (MAX_ARG_PAGES) pages. On
most architectures, the page size is 4kB, leading to a maximum size of
128kB.

In linux-2.6.23 and later, most architectures support a size limit
derived from the current RLIMIT_STACK setting (see getrlimit(2)). For
these architectures, the total size is limited to 1/4 the allowed
stack size, the limit per string is 32 pages (MAX_ARG_STRLEN), and the
maximum number of strings is 0x7FFFFFFF. Architectures with no memory
management unit are excepted: they maintain the pre-2.6.23 limit.

Hello Ollie,

Thanks. I'll see that this material makes it into a man pages release closer to the 2.6.23 final release.

Cheers,

Michael
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