50d7bd38c3
Kernel code has a regular need to describe groups of members within a structure usually when they need to be copied or initialized separately from the rest of the surrounding structure. The generally accepted design pattern in C is to use a named sub-struct: struct foo { int one; struct { int two; int three, four; } thing; int five; }; This would allow for traditional references and sizing: memcpy(&dst.thing, &src.thing, sizeof(dst.thing)); However, doing this would mean that referencing struct members enclosed by such named structs would always require including the sub-struct name in identifiers: do_something(dst.thing.three); This has tended to be quite inflexible, especially when such groupings need to be added to established code which causes huge naming churn. Three workarounds exist in the kernel for this problem, and each have other negative properties. To avoid the naming churn, there is a design pattern of adding macro aliases for the named struct: #define f_three thing.three This ends up polluting the global namespace, and makes it difficult to search for identifiers. Another common work-around in kernel code avoids the pollution by avoiding the named struct entirely, instead identifying the group's boundaries using either a pair of empty anonymous structs of a pair of zero-element arrays: struct foo { int one; struct { } start; int two; int three, four; struct { } finish; int five; }; struct foo { int one; int start[0]; int two; int three, four; int finish[0]; int five; }; This allows code to avoid needing to use a sub-struct named for member references within the surrounding structure, but loses the benefits of being able to actually use such a struct, making it rather fragile. Using these requires open-coded calculation of sizes and offsets. The efforts made to avoid common mistakes include lots of comments, or adding various BUILD_BUG_ON()s. Such code is left with no way for the compiler to reason about the boundaries (e.g. the "start" object looks like it's 0 bytes in length), making bounds checking depend on open-coded calculations: if (length > offsetof(struct foo, finish) - offsetof(struct foo, start)) return -EINVAL; memcpy(&dst.start, &src.start, offsetof(struct foo, finish) - offsetof(struct foo, start)); However, the vast majority of places in the kernel that operate on groups of members do so without any identification of the grouping, relying either on comments or implicit knowledge of the struct contents, which is even harder for the compiler to reason about, and results in even more fragile manual sizing, usually depending on member locations outside of the region (e.g. to copy "two" and "three", use the start of "four" to find the size): BUILD_BUG_ON((offsetof(struct foo, four) < offsetof(struct foo, two)) || (offsetof(struct foo, four) < offsetof(struct foo, three)); if (length > offsetof(struct foo, four) - offsetof(struct foo, two)) return -EINVAL; memcpy(&dst.two, &src.two, length); In order to have a regular programmatic way to describe a struct region that can be used for references and sizing, can be examined for bounds checking, avoids forcing the use of intermediate identifiers, and avoids polluting the global namespace, introduce the struct_group() macro. This macro wraps the member declarations to create an anonymous union of an anonymous struct (no intermediate name) and a named struct (for references and sizing): struct foo { int one; struct_group(thing, int two; int three, four; ); int five; }; if (length > sizeof(src.thing)) return -EINVAL; memcpy(&dst.thing, &src.thing, length); do_something(dst.three); There are some rare cases where the resulting struct_group() needs attributes added, so struct_group_attr() is also introduced to allow for specifying struct attributes (e.g. __align(x) or __packed). Additionally, there are places where such declarations would like to have the struct be tagged, so struct_group_tagged() is added. Given there is a need for a handful of UAPI uses too, the underlying __struct_group() macro has been defined in UAPI so it can be used there too. To avoid confusing scripts/kernel-doc, hide the macro from its struct parsing. Co-developed-by: Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com> Signed-off-by: Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com> Acked-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavoars@kernel.org> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20210728023217.GC35706@embeddedor Enhanced-by: Rasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/41183a98-bdb9-4ad6-7eab-5a7292a6df84@rasmusvillemoes.dk Enhanced-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/1d9a2e6df2a9a35b2cdd50a9a68cac5991e7e5f0.camel@intel.com Enhanced-by: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/YQKa76A6XuFqgM03@phenom.ffwll.local Acked-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> |
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arch | ||
block | ||
certs | ||
crypto | ||
Documentation | ||
drivers | ||
fs | ||
include | ||
init | ||
ipc | ||
kernel | ||
lib | ||
LICENSES | ||
mm | ||
net | ||
samples | ||
scripts | ||
security | ||
sound | ||
tools | ||
usr | ||
virt | ||
.clang-format | ||
.cocciconfig | ||
.get_maintainer.ignore | ||
.gitattributes | ||
.gitignore | ||
.mailmap | ||
COPYING | ||
CREDITS | ||
Kbuild | ||
Kconfig | ||
MAINTAINERS | ||
Makefile | ||
README |
Linux kernel ============ There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first. In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or ``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/ There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory, several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation. Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.