How can I guarantee catching a EXCEPTION_STACK_OVERFLOW structured exception in C++ under Visual Studio 2005?

Question

Background

• I have an application with a Poof-Crash[1]. I'm fairly certain it is due to a blown stack.
• The application is Multi-Threaded.
• I am compiling with "Enable C++ Exceptions: Yes With SEH Exceptions (/EHa)".
• I have written an SE Translator function and called _set_se_translator() with it.
• I have written functions for and setup set_terminate() and set_unexpected().
• To get the Stack Overflow, I must run in release mode, under heavy load, for several days. Running under a debugger is not an option as the application can't perform fast enough to achieve the runtime necessary to see the issue.
• I can simulate the issue by adding infinite recursion on execution of one of the functions, and thus test the catching of the EXCEPTION_STACK_OVERFLOW exception.
• I have WinDBG setup as the crash dump program, and get good information for all other crash issues but not this one. The crash dump will only contain one thread, which is 'Sleep()'ing. All other threads have exited.

The Question

None of the things I've tried has resulted in picking up the EXCEPTION_STACK_OVERFLOW exception.

Does anyone know how to guarantee getting a a chance at this exception during runtime in release mode?

Definitions

1. Poof-Crash: The application crashes by going "poof" and disappearing without a trace.

(Considering the name of this site, I'm kind of surprised this question isn't on here already!)

Notes

1. An answer was posted briefly about adjusting the stack size to potentially force the issue sooner and allow catching it with a debugger. That is a clever thought, but unfortunately, I don't believe it would help. The issue is likely caused by a corner case leading to infinite recursion. Shortening the stack would not expose the issue any sooner and would likely cause an unrelated crash in validly deep code. Nice idea though, and thanks for posting it, even if you did remove it.

Answer 1

Everything prior to windows xp would not (or would be harder) generally be able to trap stack overflows. With the advent of xp, you can set vectored exception handler that gets a chance at stack overflow prior to any stack-based (structured exception) handlers (this is being the very reason - structured exception handlers are stack-based).

But there's really not much you can do even if you're able to trap such an exception.

In his blog, cbrumme (sorry, do not have his/her real name) discusses a stack page neighboring the guard page (the one, that generates the stack overflow) that can potentially be used for backout. If you can squeeze your backout code to use just one stack page - you can free as much as your logic allows. Otherwise, the application is pretty much dead upon encountering stack overflow. The only other reasonable thing to do, having trapped it, is to write a dump file for later debugging.

Hope, it helps.