linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3 1/9] net: Add struct sockaddr

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Message-ID: <268ee657-903a-4271-9e17-fcf1dc79b92c@redhat.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2025 12:43:06 +0200
From: Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>
To: Kees Cook <kees@...nel.org>, Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>
Cc: "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@...eddedor.com>,
 Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>, Daniel Borkmann <daniel@...earbox.net>,
 John Fastabend <john.fastabend@...il.com>,
 "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>,
 Simon Horman <horms@...nel.org>, Kuniyuki Iwashima <kuniyu@...gle.com>,
 Willem de Bruijn <willemb@...gle.com>, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, bpf@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-hardening@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 1/9] net: Add struct sockaddr_unspec for sockaddr of
 unknown length

On 10/20/25 11:26 PM, Kees Cook wrote:
> Add flexible sockaddr structure to support addresses longer than the
> traditional 14-byte struct sockaddr::sa_data limitation without
> requiring the full 128-byte sa_data of struct sockaddr_storage. This
> allows the network APIs to pass around a pointer to an object that
> isn't lying to the compiler about how big it is, but must be accompanied
> by its actual size as an additional parameter.
> 
> It's possible we may way to migrate to including the size with the
> struct in the future, e.g.:
> 
> struct sockaddr_unspec {
> 	u16 sa_data_len;
> 	u16 sa_family;
> 	u8  sa_data[] __counted_by(sa_data_len);
> };

Side note: sockaddr_unspec is possibly not the optimal name, as
AF_UNSPEC has a specific meaning/semantic.

Name-wise, I think 'sockaddr_sized' would be better, but I agree with
David the struct may cause unaligned access problems.

/P