how to calculate max possible stack size utilization

Question

Is there any elegant way to calculate the maximum possible stack depth utilization of a program, using IDAPython?

currently my best approach is iterating through all functions and counting stack-increasing instructions.

Are you looking for the max depth available to the program or the max depth actually utilized by the program? Also, what OS are you focused on? — NirIzr, Commented Jul 8, 2018 at 12:22
looking for max depth utilized by the program and it isn't OS dependent (lets say linux) — Yoav Danieli, Commented Jul 8, 2018 at 13:59
@YoavDanieli maximum depth actually utilized by a program is not the same as maximum possible stack depth utilization, as @NirIzr has pointed out. Please clarify what you are asking. Resource limits such as maximum stack size available to a process are OS dependent. See getrlimit(2) for more on this. — julian, Commented Jul 8, 2018 at 15:32
What's worse is, they're context-dependent even on a single OS. Taking Windows, the limits vary vastly between what's allowed for a thread in user mode, in kernel mode without using user32 facilities and in kernel mode with using said facilities. The only thing that works, by my experience, is guesstimation. — 0xC0000022L, Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 9:55

prusanov · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-06 13:07:34Z

1

IDAPython-function get_frame_size(ea) gives size of stack in bytes. So you can get max stack through all available functions:

"0x%04X" % max(get_frame_size(f) for f in Functions(0, BADADDR))

answered Apr 6, 2020 at 13:07

prusanov

1716 bronze badges

Nite that it would be worth calculating the worst possible call depth (using cross references, likely as a directed graph). Special attention should be paid to recursive functions. You should also factor in a worst case for API calls.
– David
Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 21:33

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