Re: [PATCH] mmc: block: Add new ioctl to send multi commands

Arnd Bergmann
2015-09-09T20:22:39Z

On Wednesday 09 September 2015 17:44:54 Jon Hunter wrote:
>
> On 09/09/15 16:56, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > On Wednesday 09 September 2015 16:06:01 Jon Hunter wrote:
> >> +
> >> + idata = kcalloc(mcci.num_of_cmds, sizeof(*idata), GFP_KERNEL);
> >> + if (!idata) {
> >> + err = -ENOMEM;
> >> + goto cmd_err;
> >> + }
> >> +
> >> + cmds = (struct mmc_ioc_cmd __user *)(unsigned long)mcci.cmds_ptr;
> >> + for (n_cmds = 0; n_cmds < mcci.num_of_cmds; n_cmds++) {
> >> + idata[n_cmds] = mmc_blk_ioctl_copy_from_user(&cmds[n_cmds]);
> >> + if (IS_ERR(idata[n_cmds])) {
> >> + err = PTR_ERR(idata[n_cmds]);
> >> + goto cmd_err;
> >> + }
> >> + }
> >> +
> >
> > You have no upper bound on the number of commands, which means you end
> > up catching overly large arguments only through -ENOMEM. Can you come
> > up with an upper bound that is guaranteed to succeed with the allocation?
>
> The uint8 type would limit you to 256 commands (if you have the memory),
> although admittedly that is probably overkill.

Good point.

Please note a few details here:

- in uabi headers, we need to use __u8 instead of uint8, because we cannot
rely on libc header file inclusion for kernel headers.

- you have some implicit padding after the structure and should replace that
with explictit pad bytes to extend the structure to a multiple of its
alignment (8 bytes).

> >> +struct mmc_ioc_multi_cmd {
> >> + __u64 cmds_ptr;
> >> + uint8_t num_of_cmds;
> >> +};
> >
> > complex commands are always nasty in one way or another. Can you describe
> > in the patch description why you picked an indirect pointer over something
> > like
> >
> > struct mmc_ioc_multi_cmd {
> > __u64 num_of_cmds;
> > struct mmc_ioc_cmd cmds[0];
> > };
> >
> > as I said, both are ugly. My first choice would have been the other one,
> > but I'm sure you have some reasons yourself.
>
> It was a suggestion from Olof to ensure the structure size is constant for
> both 32-bit and 64-bit userspaces. I am not sure if it is worth adding a
> macro similar to the below for this?
>
> #define mmc_ioc_cmd_set_data(ic, ptr) ic.data_ptr = (__u64)(unsigned long) ptr
>
> However, yes can update the changelog.

I was not referring to the use of an __u64 variable to pass a pointer, that
is expected (and the macro would make it harder to understand).

What I meant instead was the use of a pointer to an array as opposed to
passing the array itself. With the definition I gave above, the size would
still be the same on all architectures (you can replace the __u64 with
an __u8 plus padding if you like), as sizeof(struct mmc_ioc_multi_cmd)
is just '8' here.

Alternatively, you could just use an array of struct mmc_ioc_cmd by
itself and encode the length in the ioctl command:

#define MMC_COMBO_IOC_CMD(n) _IOC(_IOC_READ|_IOC_WRITE, 1, sizeof(struct mmc_ioc_cmd) * (n))

This is of course also ugly because the ioctl command number is not
fixed, and because the limit for the number of mmc command blocks
is architecture dependent, depending on the definition of the _IOC
macro that can have either 13 or 14 bits to encode the argument length
in bytes.

Arnd