Re: [PATCH] selftests/user_events: Avoid taking address of packed member in perf_test

Ankit Khushwaha
2025-10-28T16:58:21Z

On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 04:25:21PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Oct 2025 17:04:39 +0530 Ankit Khushwaha <ankitkhushwaha.linux@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Accessing 'reg.write_index' directly triggers a -Waddress-of-packed-member
> > warning due to potential unaligned pointer access:
> >
> > perf_test.c:239:38: warning: taking address of packed member 'write_index'
> > of class or structure 'user_reg' may result in an unaligned pointer value
> > [-Waddress-of-packed-member]
> > 239 | ASSERT_NE(-1, write(self->data_fd, &reg.write_index,
> > | ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >
> > Use memcpy() instead to safely copy the value and avoid unaligned pointer
> > access across architectures.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > --- a/tools/testing/selftests/user_events/perf_test.c
> > +++ b/tools/testing/selftests/user_events/perf_test.c
> > @@ -201,6 +201,7 @@ TEST_F(user, perf_empty_events) {
> > struct perf_event_mmap_page *perf_page;
> > int page_size = sysconf(_SC_PAGESIZE);
> > int id, fd;
> > + __u32 write_index;
> > __u32 *val;
> >
> > reg.size = sizeof(reg);
> > @@ -236,7 +237,8 @@ TEST_F(user, perf_empty_events) {
> > ASSERT_EQ(1 << reg.enable_bit, self->check);
> >
> > /* Ensure write shows up at correct offset */
> > - ASSERT_NE(-1, write(self->data_fd, &reg.write_index,
> > + memcpy(&write_index, &reg.write_index, sizeof(reg.write_index));
> > + ASSERT_NE(-1, write(self->data_fd, &write_index,
> > sizeof(reg.write_index)));
>
> Simply casting &write_index to void* would fix this?

yes, this hides the type mismatch from the compiler. But i think
casting to void * will not fix the alignment mismatch for packed struct.
It works on x86, but might break on other platform.

>
> > val = (void *)(((char *)perf_page) + perf_page->data_offset);
> > ASSERT_EQ(PERF_RECORD_SAMPLE, *val);

Thanks
Ankit