Recompile glibc with larger stack size?

Hi all -

I've seen the root of my problem mentioned before, but no one has posted a clear solution.

Primer: WineX is a program used to run windows games under linux. It is like Wine, but works better for games (generally). I enjoy using it despite the fact that many people have reasons for feeling it is evil.

Basically I like to use WineX, and I have just moved to using Slackware (9.1 with kernel 2.6.3). WineX warns me that because of the version of glibc I am using, it has to use pthreads, and then it claims that my stack size is too small for some games (there is an actual test you can run to verify this which fails even if I run it after running ulimit -a).

Transgaming (the people who make WineX) say that the only solution at this time is to recompile glibc with a larger default stack size. They also warn that this is not an easy task.

While it would be nice if someone had a step by step guide for me to use, I don't expect that. What I am posting for is to get some advice:

1. Is recompiling glibc with a larger default stack size really that hard?
2. Will it affect anything else that I should be aware of (ie. will stability be compromised or will other components require a recompile)?
3. Is there any advice I can get of any kind? I'll read and do my part, I just want to know if there are any gotchas out there for this or if anyone has anything to tell me that might save me a few hours of reading/experimenting.


Thanks all.

bug

ps - Slack is just crazy good - just came from Fedora and this is a whole new experience. Dropline gnome is so sexy and slack is NOT hard to deal with at all. I always felt Fedora was fighting me and slack just rolls with me. Too bad people are scared off by the rep.

Encountered this problem too.

Anyone got solution?

1. Is recompiling glibc with a larger default stack size really that hard?

Nope. Just grab the glibc directory /source/l from your favorite mirror. Included in the directory is a SlackBuild script. Edit it to add the necessary option to the ./configure line to increase the stack size. Also, set the BUILD environment variable to "6custom" or "6(initials)" or something similar, assuming 6 is the current build revision (to find out, 'ls /var/log/packages | grep glibc' it'll be the last number in the glibc package output. Also, you can set the ARCH environment variable to get a small amount of optimization, or edit the script to add your own optimizations (though this can be dangerous). Though, I've read that optimizing the kernel and glibc will give good speed boosts, and most other packages aren't worth optimizing. Then execute the script. This will compile glibc and create a series of packages which you can then use with upgradepkg to upgrade to your custom glibc.

# ARCH="i686" BUILD="6a" ./SlackBuild

Then upgrade to the packages it generates, and you should be set.

EDIT: I'm assuming above that changing the default stack size in glibc is simply a matter of passing it a configure option. That may or may not be the case, though I assume there is such a configure option.

2. Will it affect anything else that I should be aware of (ie. will stability be compromised or will other components require a recompile)?

That I don't know.

3. Is there any advice I can get of any kind? I'll read and do my part, I just want to know if there are any gotchas out there for this or if anyone has anything to tell me that might save me a few hours of reading/experimenting.

Hopefully the SlackBuild script will ease things for you a bit, but other than that I've never bothered trying to rebuild glibc in Slackware.

I have this problem too, cedega 4.0 complains about this, although warcraft 3 at least seems to work perfectly. I tried to read http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/libc.html but couldn't find anything related to changing stack size. And there are some warnings that compiling the library is not easy etc... Anyone tried it yet?