Re: [PATCH v5 5/8] virtio: Treat alloc_dax() -EOPNOTSUPP failure as non-fatal

Dan Williams
2024-02-12T23:03:18Z

[ add Lukas ]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Feb 2024 at 14:04, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> wrote:
> >
> > This works because the internals of virtio_fs_cleanup_dax(), "kill_dax()
> > and put_dax()", know how to handle a NULL @dax_dev. It is still early
> > days with the "cleanup" helpers, but I wonder if anyone else cares that
> > the DEFINE_FREE() above does not check for NULL?
>
> Well, the main reason for DEFINE_FREE() to check for NULL is not
> correctness, but code generation. See the comment about kfree() in
> <linux/cleanup.h>:
>
> * NOTE: the DEFINE_FREE()'s @free expression includes a NULL test even though
> * kfree() is fine to be called with a NULL value. This is on purpose. This way
> * the compiler sees the end of our alloc_obj() function as [...]
>
> with the full explanation there.
>
> Now, whether the code wants to actually use the cleanup() helpers for
> a single use-case is debatable.
>
> But yes, if it does, I suspect it should use !IS_ERR_OR_NULL(ptr).o

I am trying to arrive at a common recommendation given Lukas found that
IS_ERR_OR_NULL() resulted in unwanted NULL checks emitted in the
assembly [1].

He is doing something similar:

http://lore.kernel.org/r/4143b15418c4ecf87ddeceb36813943c3ede17aa.1707734526.git.lukas@wunner.de

...and introduced an assume() helper.

However, Lukas, I think Linus is right, your DEFINE_FREE() should use
IS_ERR_OR_NULL(). I.e. the problem is trying to use
__free(x509_free_certificate) in x509_cert_parse().

> --- a/crypto/asymmetric_keys/x509_cert_parser.c
> +++ b/crypto/asymmetric_keys/x509_cert_parser.c
> @@ -60,24 +60,24 @@ void x509_free_certificate(struct x509_certificate *cert)
> */
> struct x509_certificate *x509_cert_parse(const void *data, size_t datalen)
> {
> - struct x509_certificate *cert;
> - struct x509_parse_context *ctx;
> + struct x509_certificate *cert __free(x509_free_certificate);

...make this:

struct x509_certificate *cert __free(kfree);

...and Mathieu, this should be IS_ERR_OR_NULL() to skip an unnecessary
call to virtio_fs_cleanup_dax() at function exit that the compiler
should elide.