Re: Detecting stack corruption

From:

"Alex Blekhman" <xfkt@oohay.moc>

Newsgroups:

microsoft.public.vc.language

Date:

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:18:54 +0200

Message-ID:

<OKgVX0TVHHA.1200@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl>

<better_cs_now@yahoo.com> wrote:

Our application hangs with 0% CPU usage. When I "Break
All", I see a
very short call stack for our main thread (much shorter
than it should
be) - only the top few entries are shown. My experience
has always
been that this inidctates stack corruption. I have
directed the
debugger to break as soon as an exception is thrown. This
has been
done for all exceptions, in particular "Stack memory
corruption" under
"Native run-time checks". However, this is not catching
the problem.
We have a very large application with many threads, so
it's like
hunting for a needle in a haystack. Furthermore,
procurring
BoundsChecker has been quashed from above. So, I'd like to
solicit
alternatives on how to track down the point at which the
stack is
first corrupted.

You can enable run-time checks option of VC++ compiler. When
enabled, compiler will probe stack after exit of every
function. However, I reckon it's already enabled by default
(at least, for debug builds), so you should have been catch
these errors. Anyway, here's necessary information:

1. Look in MSDN for compiler switch /Gs (Control Stack
Checking Calls). Alternatively, you can use `#pragma
check_stack' directive.

2. Use compiler switch /RTC (Run-time checks).

"How to: Use Native Run-Time Checks"
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-US/library/162azb0k.aspx

"Security Checks at Runtime and Compile Time"
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa289171(vs.71).aspx

HTH
Alex