Commit 027bdec8 authored by David Vernet's avatar David Vernet Committed by Alexei Starovoitov

bpf/docs: Document the nocast aliasing behavior of ___init

When comparing BTF IDs for pointers being passed to kfunc arguments, the
verifier will allow pointer types that are equivalent according to the C
standard. For example, for:

struct bpf_cpumask {
	cpumask_t cpumask;
	refcount_t usage;
};

The verifier will allow a struct bpf_cpumask * to be passed to a kfunc
that takes a const struct cpumask * (cpumask_t is a typedef of struct
cpumask). The exception to this rule is if a type is suffixed with
___init, such as:

struct nf_conn___init {
	struct nf_conn ct;
};

The verifier will _not_ allow a struct nf_conn___init * to be passed to
a kfunc that expects a struct nf_conn *. This patch documents this
behavior in the kfuncs documentation page.
Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid Vernet <void@manifault.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230125143816.721952-8-void@manifault.comSigned-off-by: default avatarAlexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
parent d94cbde2
......@@ -247,6 +247,49 @@ type. An example is shown below::
}
late_initcall(init_subsystem);
2.6 Specifying no-cast aliases with ___init
--------------------------------------------
The verifier will always enforce that the BTF type of a pointer passed to a
kfunc by a BPF program, matches the type of pointer specified in the kfunc
definition. The verifier, does, however, allow types that are equivalent
according to the C standard to be passed to the same kfunc arg, even if their
BTF_IDs differ.
For example, for the following type definition:
.. code-block:: c
struct bpf_cpumask {
cpumask_t cpumask;
refcount_t usage;
};
The verifier would allow a ``struct bpf_cpumask *`` to be passed to a kfunc
taking a ``cpumask_t *`` (which is a typedef of ``struct cpumask *``). For
instance, both ``struct cpumask *`` and ``struct bpf_cpmuask *`` can be passed
to bpf_cpumask_test_cpu().
In some cases, this type-aliasing behavior is not desired. ``struct
nf_conn___init`` is one such example:
.. code-block:: c
struct nf_conn___init {
struct nf_conn ct;
};
The C standard would consider these types to be equivalent, but it would not
always be safe to pass either type to a trusted kfunc. ``struct
nf_conn___init`` represents an allocated ``struct nf_conn`` object that has
*not yet been initialized*, so it would therefore be unsafe to pass a ``struct
nf_conn___init *`` to a kfunc that's expecting a fully initialized ``struct
nf_conn *`` (e.g. ``bpf_ct_change_timeout()``).
In order to accommodate such requirements, the verifier will enforce strict
PTR_TO_BTF_ID type matching if two types have the exact same name, with one
being suffixed with ``___init``.
3. Core kfuncs
==============
......
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