From: "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
To: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>, keescook@chromium.org
Cc: daniel@iogearbox.net, gustavoars@kernel.org, jgg@ziepe.ca,
kvm@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH][next] treewide: uapi: Replace zero-length arrays with flexible-array members
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:38:07 +0900 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <da02314c-e6da-4d9e-a2c8-cd3ee096bc0c@embeddedor.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <aaa7ac93db25459fa5a629d0da5abf13e93d8301.camel@infradead.org>
On 2/23/26 23:28, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On 2022-07-28 at 10:54:58 -0700, Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> wrote:
>> The issue here seems to be a collision between "unknown array size"
>> and known sizes:
>>
>> struct bpf_lpm_trie_key {
>> __u32 prefixlen; /* up to 32 for AF_INET, 128 for AF_INET6 */
>> __u8 data[0]; /* Arbitrary size */
>> };
>>
>> struct lpm_key {
>> struct bpf_lpm_trie_key trie_key;
>> __u32 data;
>> };
>>
>> This is treating trie_key as a header, which it's not: it's a complete
>> structure. :)
>>
>> Perhaps:
>>
>> struct lpm_key {
>> __u32 prefixlen;
>> __u32 data;
>> };
>>
>> I don't see anything else trying to include bpf_lpm_trie_key.
>
> What was the eventual conclusion here?
>
> These changes broke userspace compilation, because a *lot* of these
> structures ending with VLAs are very much used as headers.
>
> QEMU does it, for example...
>
> uint64_t kvm_arch_get_supported_msr_feature(KVMState *s, uint32_t index)
> {
> struct {
> struct kvm_msrs info;
> struct kvm_msr_entry entries[1];
> } msr_data = {};
>
>
> ... which works in C but not in C++, which gives an error I can't work
> out how to avoid.
>
> Am I missing something, or did we break our userspace headers for C++
> and make them C-only?
>
> $ cat test_kvm.cpp
> #include <cstdlib>
> #include <asm/kvm.h>
>
> struct msr_data {
> struct kvm_msrs info;
> struct kvm_msr_entry entries[1];
> };
Something like this should eventually land:
diff --git a/tools/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h b/tools/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h
index 7ceff6583652..295b2a54b25d 100644
--- a/tools/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h
+++ b/tools/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h
@@ -192,11 +192,14 @@ struct kvm_msr_entry {
__u64 data;
};
-/* for KVM_GET_MSRS and KVM_SET_MSRS */
-struct kvm_msrs {
+struct kvm_msrs_hdr {
__u32 nmsrs; /* number of msrs in entries */
__u32 pad;
+};
+/* for KVM_GET_MSRS and KVM_SET_MSRS */
+struct kvm_msrs {
+ struct kvm_msrs_hdr;
struct kvm_msr_entry entries[];
};
diff --git a/tools/testing/selftests/kvm/Makefile.kvm b/tools/testing/selftests/kvm/Makefile.kvm
index fdec90e85467..a354ee1ef359 100644
--- a/tools/testing/selftests/kvm/Makefile.kvm
+++ b/tools/testing/selftests/kvm/Makefile.kvm
@@ -261,6 +261,8 @@ CFLAGS += -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wuninitialized -O2 -g -std=gnu99 \
-fno-builtin-memcmp -fno-builtin-memcpy \
-fno-builtin-memset -fno-builtin-strnlen \
-fno-stack-protector -fno-PIE -fno-strict-aliasing \
+ -Wno-microsoft-anon-tag \
+ -fms-extensions \
-I$(LINUX_TOOL_INCLUDE) -I$(LINUX_TOOL_ARCH_INCLUDE) \
-I$(LINUX_HDR_PATH) -Iinclude -I$(<D) -Iinclude/$(ARCH) \
-I ../rseq -I.. $(EXTRA_CFLAGS) $(KHDR_INCLUDES)
diff --git a/tools/testing/selftests/kvm/lib/x86/processor.c b/tools/testing/selftests/kvm/lib/x86/processor.c
index fab18e9be66c..0f881ee8c37c 100644
--- a/tools/testing/selftests/kvm/lib/x86/processor.c
+++ b/tools/testing/selftests/kvm/lib/x86/processor.c
@@ -1076,7 +1076,7 @@ uint64_t vcpu_get_msr(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, uint64_t msr_index)
int _vcpu_set_msr(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, uint64_t msr_index, uint64_t msr_value)
{
struct {
- struct kvm_msrs header;
+ struct kvm_msrs_hdr header;
struct kvm_msr_entry entry;
} buffer = {};
(patch above untested)
-Gustavo
>
> struct msr_data *alloc_msr_data(void)
> {
> return static_cast<struct msr_data *>(malloc(sizeof(struct msr_data)));
> }
>
> $ g++ -c -o test_kvm.o test_kvm.cpp
> In file included from test_kvm.cpp:2:
> /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/asm/kvm.h:194:30: error: flexible array member ‘kvm_msrs::entries’ not at end of ‘struct msr_data’
> 194 | struct kvm_msr_entry entries[];
> | ^~~~~~~
> test_kvm.cpp:6:30: note: next member ‘kvm_msr_entry msr_data::entries [1]’ declared here
> 6 | struct kvm_msr_entry entries[1];
> | ^~~~~~~
> test_kvm.cpp:4:8: note: in the definition of ‘struct msr_data’
> 4 | struct msr_data {
> | ^~~~~~~~
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-02-23 18:39 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 27+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-06-27 18:04 [PATCH][next] treewide: uapi: Replace zero-length arrays with flexible-array members Gustavo A. R. Silva
2022-06-27 18:27 ` Daniel Borkmann
2022-06-27 18:35 ` Gustavo A. R. Silva
2022-06-28 0:40 ` Jason Gunthorpe
2022-06-28 0:58 ` Gustavo A. R. Silva
2022-06-28 2:21 ` Gustavo A. R. Silva
2022-06-28 13:36 ` Jason Gunthorpe
2022-06-28 13:56 ` Gustavo A. R. Silva
2022-06-28 17:54 ` Kees Cook
2022-06-28 18:44 ` Jason Gunthorpe
2026-02-23 14:28 ` David Woodhouse
2026-02-23 3:38 ` Gustavo A. R. Silva [this message]
2026-02-23 19:57 ` David Woodhouse
2026-02-26 11:44 ` [PATCH] KVM: x86: Fix C++ user API for structures with variable length arrays David Woodhouse
2026-02-26 19:02 ` Kees Cook
2026-02-27 8:29 ` David Woodhouse
2026-02-28 0:43 ` Kees Cook
2026-02-28 8:54 ` David Woodhouse
2026-03-05 18:36 ` Sean Christopherson
2026-03-05 19:18 ` David Woodhouse
2026-03-05 19:31 ` Sean Christopherson
2026-03-05 19:49 ` [PATCH v2] KVM: x86: Use __DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY() for UAPI structures with VLAs David Woodhouse
2022-06-27 19:53 ` [PATCH][next] treewide: uapi: Replace zero-length arrays with flexible-array members Stephen Hemminger
2022-06-28 14:18 ` Gustavo A. R. Silva
2022-06-27 22:31 ` Dan Williams
2022-06-28 7:27 ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2022-06-28 18:05 ` Kees Cook
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