Re: [RFC v2 2/3] atomic: Specify alignment for atomic_t and atomic64_t

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2025, at 04:18, Finn Thain wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Sep 2025, I wrote:
>> 
>> ... there's still some kmem cache or other allocator somewhere that has 
>> produced some misaligned path and dentry structures. So we get 
>> misaligned atomics somewhere in the VFS and TTY layers. I was unable to 
>> find those allocations.
>> 
>
> It turned out that the problem wasn't dynamic allocations, it was a local 
> variable in the core locking code (kernel/locking/rwsem.c): a misaligned 
> long used with an atomic operation (cmpxchg). To get natural alignment for 
> 64-bit quantities, I had to align other local variables as well, such as 
> the one in ktime_get_real_ts64_mg() that's used with 
> atomic64_try_cmpxchg(). The atomic_t branch in my github repo has the 
> patches I wrote for that.

It looks like the variable you get the warning for is not
even the atomic64_t but the 'old' argument to atomic64_try_cmpxchg(),
at least in some of the cases you found if not all of them.

I don't see where why there is a requirement to have that
aligned at all, even if we do require the atomic64_t to
be naturally aligned, and I would expect the same warning
to hit on x86-32 and the other architectures with 4-byte
alignment of u64 variable on stack and .data.

> To silence the misalignment WARN from CONFIG_DEBUG_ATOMIC, for 64-bit 
> atomic operations, for my small m68k .config, it was also necesary to 
> increase ARCH_SLAB_MINALIGN to 8. However, I'm not advocating a 
> ARCH_SLAB_MINALIGN increase, as that wastes memory.

Have you tried to quantify the memory waste here? I assume
that most slab allocations are already 8-byte aligned, at
least kmalloc() with size>4, while custom caches are usually
done for larger structures where an extra average of 2 bytes
per allocation may not be that bad.

> diff --git a/include/linux/instrumented.h b/include/linux/instrumented.h
> index 402a999a0d6b..cd569a87c0a8 100644
> --- a/include/linux/instrumented.h
> +++ b/include/linux/instrumented.h
> @@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ static __always_inline void 
> instrument_atomic_read(const volatile void *v, size_
>  {
>  	kasan_check_read(v, size);
>  	kcsan_check_atomic_read(v, size);
> -	WARN_ON_ONCE(IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_DEBUG_ATOMIC) && ((unsigned long)v & 
> (size - 1)));
> +	WARN_ON_ONCE(IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_DEBUG_ATOMIC) && ((unsigned long)v & 
> (size - 1) & 3));
>  }

What is the alignment of stack variables on m68k? E.g. if you
have a function with two local variables, would that still
be able to trigger the check?

int f(atomic64_t *a)
{
     u16 pad;
     u64 old;
     
     g(&pad);
     atomic64_try_cmpxchg(a, &old, 0);
}

Since there is nothing telling the compiler that
the 'old' argument to atomic*_try_cmpcxchg() needs to
be naturally aligned, maybe that check should be changed
to only test for the ABI-guaranteed alignment? I think
that would still be needed on x86-32.
 
      Arnd

diff --git a/include/linux/atomic/atomic-instrumented.h b/include/linux/atomic/atomic-instrumented.h
index 9409a6ddf3e0..e57763a889bd 100644
--- a/include/linux/atomic/atomic-instrumented.h
+++ b/include/linux/atomic/atomic-instrumented.h
@@ -1276,7 +1276,7 @@ atomic_try_cmpxchg(atomic_t *v, int *old, int new)
 {
 	kcsan_mb();
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic_try_cmpxchg(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -1298,7 +1298,7 @@ static __always_inline bool
 atomic_try_cmpxchg_acquire(atomic_t *v, int *old, int new)
 {
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic_try_cmpxchg_acquire(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -1321,7 +1321,7 @@ atomic_try_cmpxchg_release(atomic_t *v, int *old, int new)
 {
 	kcsan_release();
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic_try_cmpxchg_release(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -1343,7 +1343,7 @@ static __always_inline bool
 atomic_try_cmpxchg_relaxed(atomic_t *v, int *old, int new)
 {
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic_try_cmpxchg_relaxed(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -2854,7 +2854,7 @@ atomic64_try_cmpxchg(atomic64_t *v, s64 *old, s64 new)
 {
 	kcsan_mb();
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic64_try_cmpxchg(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -2876,7 +2876,7 @@ static __always_inline bool
 atomic64_try_cmpxchg_acquire(atomic64_t *v, s64 *old, s64 new)
 {
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic64_try_cmpxchg_acquire(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -2899,7 +2899,7 @@ atomic64_try_cmpxchg_release(atomic64_t *v, s64 *old, s64 new)
 {
 	kcsan_release();
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic64_try_cmpxchg_release(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -2921,7 +2921,7 @@ static __always_inline bool
 atomic64_try_cmpxchg_relaxed(atomic64_t *v, s64 *old, s64 new)
 {
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic64_try_cmpxchg_relaxed(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -4432,7 +4432,7 @@ atomic_long_try_cmpxchg(atomic_long_t *v, long *old, long new)
 {
 	kcsan_mb();
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic_long_try_cmpxchg(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -4454,7 +4454,7 @@ static __always_inline bool
 atomic_long_try_cmpxchg_acquire(atomic_long_t *v, long *old, long new)
 {
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic_long_try_cmpxchg_acquire(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -4477,7 +4477,7 @@ atomic_long_try_cmpxchg_release(atomic_long_t *v, long *old, long new)
 {
 	kcsan_release();
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic_long_try_cmpxchg_release(v, old, new);
 }
 
@@ -4499,7 +4499,7 @@ static __always_inline bool
 atomic_long_try_cmpxchg_relaxed(atomic_long_t *v, long *old, long new)
 {
 	instrument_atomic_read_write(v, sizeof(*v));
-	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, sizeof(*old));
+	instrument_atomic_read_write(old, alignof(*old));
 	return raw_atomic_long_try_cmpxchg_relaxed(v, old, new);
 }