How do operating systems detect stack overflows of user-space programs [and then send SIGTERM or SIGSEGV to those userspace programs] ?
How do operating systems detect stack overflows of user-space programs [and then send SIGTERM
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How do operating systems detect stack overflows of user-space programs [and then send SIGTERM or SIGSEGV to those userspace programs] ?
The answer will depend on the target architecture and the particular OS. Since the question is tagged Linux, you have rather biased the question which on the face of it seems more general.
In a sophisticated OS or RTOS such as Linux or QNX Neutrino, with MMU protection support, memory protection mechanisms may be used such as the guard pages already mentioned. Such OSs require a target with an MMU of course.
Simpler OSs and typical RTOS scheduling kernels without MMU support may use a number of methods. The simplest is to place a guard signature at the top of the stack, which is checked for modification when the scheduler runs. This is a bit hit-and-miss, it requires that the stack-overflow actually modifies the signature, and that the resulting corruption does not cause a crash before the scheduler next runs. Some systems with on-chip debug resources may be able to place an access break-point on the signature word and cause an exception when it is hit.
In development a common technique is to initially fill each thread stack with a signature and to have a thread periodically check for the “high-tide” and issue a warning if it exceeds a certain percentage level.