linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH V2] mm/slab: ensure all metadata in slab object are word-aligned

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Message-ID: <1bc9a01a-24b3-40a0-838c-9337151e55c5@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2025 15:36:28 +0100
From: Andrey Ryabinin <ryabinin.a.a@...il.com>
To: Harry Yoo <harry.yoo@...cle.com>, Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
 Alexander Potapenko <glider@...gle.com>,
 Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@...ux.dev>,
 Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
 Vincenzo Frascino <vincenzo.frascino@....com>,
 Feng Tang <feng.79.tang@...il.com>, Christoph Lameter <cl@...two.org>,
 Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com>, Andrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@...il.com>,
 linux-mm@...ck.org, Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@...e.de>,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, kasan-dev@...glegroups.com,
 stable@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH V2] mm/slab: ensure all metadata in slab object are
 word-aligned



On 10/27/25 1:00 PM, Harry Yoo wrote:
> When the SLAB_STORE_USER debug flag is used, any metadata placed after
> the original kmalloc request size (orig_size) is not properly aligned
> on 64-bit architectures because its type is unsigned int. When both KASAN
> and SLAB_STORE_USER are enabled, kasan_alloc_meta is misaligned.
> 

kasan_alloc_meta is properly aligned. It consists of 4 32-bit words,
so the proper alignment is 32bit regardless of architecture bitness.

kasan_free_meta however requires 'unsigned long' alignment
and could be misaligned if placed at 32-bit boundary on 64-bit arch

> Note that 64-bit architectures without HAVE_EFFICIENT_UNALIGNED_ACCESS
> are assumed to require 64-bit accesses to be 64-bit aligned.
> See HAVE_64BIT_ALIGNED_ACCESS and commit adab66b71abf ("Revert:
> "ring-buffer: Remove HAVE_64BIT_ALIGNED_ACCESS"") for more details.
> 
> Because not all architectures support unaligned memory accesses,
> ensure that all metadata (track, orig_size, kasan_{alloc,free}_meta)
> in a slab object are word-aligned. struct track, kasan_{alloc,free}_meta
> are aligned by adding __aligned(__alignof__(unsigned long)).
> 

__aligned() attribute ensures nothing. It tells compiler what alignment to expect
and affects compiler controlled placement of struct in memory (e.g. stack/.bss/.data)
But it can't enforce placement in dynamic memory.

Also for struct kasan_free_meta, struct track alignof(unsigned long) already dictated
by C standard, so adding this __aligned() have zero effect.
And there is no reason to increase alignment requirement for kasan_alloc_meta struct.

> For orig_size, use ALIGN(sizeof(unsigned int), sizeof(unsigned long)) to
> make clear that its size remains unsigned int but it must be aligned to
> a word boundary. On 64-bit architectures, this reserves 8 bytes for
> orig_size, which is acceptable since kmalloc's original request size
> tracking is intended for debugging rather than production use.
I would suggest to use 'unsigned long' for orig_size. It changes nothing for 32-bit,
and it shouldn't increase memory usage for 64-bit since we currently wasting it anyway
to align next object to ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN.