linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] linux/types.h: Restore the ability to disable sparse endianness checks

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <20171006173538.GA4106@lst.de>
Date:   Fri, 6 Oct 2017 19:35:38 +0200
From:   Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
To:     Bart Van Assche <bart.vanassche@....com>
Cc:     "Michael S . Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] linux/types.h: Restore the ability to disable sparse
        endianness checks

On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 10:23:53AM -0700, Bart Van Assche wrote:
> The purpose of patch "linux/types.h: enable endian checks for all
> sparse builds" was to encourage driver authors to annotate
> endianness correctly in their drivers. However, since that patch
> went upstream no endianness annotations in drivers have been fixed.
> I think that this shows that the followed approach does not work,
> probably because several driver authors do not use sparse. Restore
> the ability to disable sparse endianness checks such that it
> becomes again easy to review other sparse diagnostics for people
> who want to analyze drivers they are not the author of.

So how do we get people to do it?  Out of the sparse checks endianess
warnings are the most useful, together with __user and __iomem.