Re: [PATCH 2/3] vmsplice: make vmsplice a trivial wrapper for preadv2/pwritev2

[David Laight <david.laight.linux@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 4 Jun 2026 07:17:10 -0700
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Jun 2026 at 02:06, David Laight <david.laight.linux@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Something needs to ensure that the high 32bits of the fd get masked off
> > on 64bit systems.  
> 
> That something already exists: CLASS(fd, f)(fd);
> 
> It ignores the top bits, because 'fdget()' takes an 'unsigned int'.
> 
> We have been a bit random in how we declare the system calls in
> general, and we mix 'unsigned int' and 'int' and 'unsigned long'
> pretty much randomly when it comes to file descriptor arguments to
> system calls.
> 
> fs/read_write.c in particular uses all three cases with no real logic to it all:
> 
>   SYSCALL_DEFINE3(lseek, unsigned int, fd, ..
>   SYSCALL_DEFINE3(readv, unsigned long, fd, ..
>   SYSCALL_DEFINE4(sendfile, int, out_fd, ..
> 
> but then anything that uses fdget() (through one of the helper classes
> or not) will simply not care.
> 
> Does it make sense? Is it pretty? Nope. Does it matter? Also nope.

I know it has mattered elsewhere, and is easy to get wrong because
'mostly it works'.

At least u32/u64 is reasonably sane - the called function has to ignore
the high bits (at least on x86).

Bool is another matter entirely, (IIRC from a couple of weeks ago)
gcc will assume that the low 8 bits of the parameter register are
either 0 or 1 and clang assumes that the low 32 bits are 0 or 1.
You can't even check with 'if ((u32)bool_param > 1) error()' because
the compiler 'knows' it can't be false.
It all dumps you down one of the UB 'rabbit holes'.

-- David

> 
>                   Linus