diff --git a/fs/cifs/smb2pdu.c b/fs/cifs/smb2pdu.c
index c705de32e225..c7614ade875b 100644
--- a/fs/cifs/smb2pdu.c
+++ b/fs/cifs/smb2pdu.c
@@ -2571,19 +2571,15 @@ alloc_path_with_tree_prefix(__le16 **out_path, int *out_size, int *out_len,
 
 	path_len = UniStrnlen((wchar_t *)path, PATH_MAX);
 
-	/*
-	 * make room for one path separator between the treename and
-	 * path
-	 */
-	*out_len = treename_len + 1 + path_len;
+	/* make room for one path separator only if @path isn't empty */
+	*out_len = treename_len + (path[0] ? 1 : 0) + path_len;
 
 	/*
-	 * final path needs to be null-terminated UTF16 with a
-	 * size aligned to 8
+	 * final path needs to be 8-byte aligned as specified in
+	 * MS-SMB2 2.2.13 SMB2 CREATE Request.
 	 */
-
-	*out_size = roundup((*out_len+1)*2, 8);
-	*out_path = kzalloc(*out_size, GFP_KERNEL);
+	*out_size = roundup(*out_len * sizeof(__le16), 8);
+	*out_path = kzalloc(*out_size + sizeof(__le16) /* null */, GFP_KERNEL);
 	if (!*out_path)
 		return -ENOMEM;