Re: [PATCH 1/5] fs: ext4: initialize fsdata in pagecache_write()

Matthew Wilcox
2022-11-22T03:40:37Z

On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 11:48:40AM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Nov 2022 12:21:30 +0100 Alexander Potapenko <glider@google.com> wrote:
>
> > When aops->write_begin() does not initialize fsdata, KMSAN reports
> > an error passing the latter to aops->write_end().
> >
> > Fix this by unconditionally initializing fsdata.
> >
> > ...
> >
>
> I'm assuming that this is not-a-bug, and that these changes are purely
> workarounds for a KMSAN shortcoming?

It's a weird one. It used to be not-a-bug. Then we changed from
std=gnu99 to std=gnu11 or something. And in the intervening years,
the C standards ctte decided that passing an uninitialised pointer to a
function was UB. So we start by passing a pointer to the pointer to
->write_begin(). Some ->write_begin functions initialise that pointer;
others don't. Then we pass the pointer directly to ->write_end. If
->write_begin initialised the pointer, that's fine, and if not, it's UB.
Of course the ->write_end doesn't use it if the ->write_begin didn't
initialise it, but it's too late because merely calling the function
was UB. Thanks, Itanium!