strange stack limit behavior when allocating more than 2GB mem on 32bit machine

Hi,

Here I encounter something which I can't understand.
What I want to do is to allocate ~2.5GB mem, it fails when stack limit
is unlimited, but succeeded when stack limit is 10240.

Here is the code:

#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
        char *p;
        long i;
        size_t n;

        if (argc != 2 || atol(argv[1]) <= 0) {
                fprintf(stderr, "usage: malloc value (MB)\n");
                return 1;
        }
        n = 1024 * 1024 * atol(argv[1]);
        if (!(p = malloc(n))) {
                perror("malloc failed");
                return 2;
        }
        printf("Malloc succeeded\n");
        free(p);
        return 0;
}


and here is what confused me:

$ uname -a
Linux stone 2.6.9-11.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri May 20 18:26:27 EDT 2005 i686
i686 i386 GNU/Linux <==== 32bit system
$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2024       1996         28          0         30       1401
-/+ buffers/cache:        563       1461
Swap:        10236          0      10236
$ ulimit -s
10240
$ ./malloc 2500
Malloc succeeded               <======= succeeds when stack limit is 10240
$ ulimit -s unlimited
$ ./malloc 2500
malloc failed: Cannot allocate memory   <======== fails when stack
limit is unlimited???


BTW, there is no such problem on 64bit machine


Could you please give some insight on this?

Regards