Re: [PATCH][next] wifi: rtl8xxxu: Avoid -Wflex-array-member-not-at-end warnings

[Michal Pecio]

On Sun, 7 Dec 2025 08:55:59 +0900, Greg KH wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 07, 2025 at 12:16:08AM +0100, Michal Pecio wrote:
> > Hi,
> >   
> > > >> I got something. In my case everything seemed fine until I
> > > >> unplugged the wifi adapter. And then the system still worked
> > > >> for a few minutes before it froze.  
> > 
> > Sounds like memory corruption.
> >   
> > > > Zenm and I tested below changes which can also reproduce the
> > > > symptom, so I wonder driver might assume urb is the first
> > > > member of struct, but unfortunately I can't find that.  
> > 
> > That's what it seems to be doing, because it uses usb_init_urb()
> > on urbs embedded in some struct and then usb_free_urb().
> > 
> > If you look what usb_free_urb() does, it decrements refcount and
> > attempts to free urb. But here urb is a member of a larger struct,
> > so I guess the whole struct is freed (and this was either
> > intentional or a bug that didn't happen to blow up yet).  
> 
> That's not ok at all, it's amazing this is working today.  urbs need
> to be "stand alone" structures and never embedded into anything else.

Is it though?

usb_init_urb() is exported and documented as below. Neither of which
suggests that the function must not be used by drivers.

/**
 * usb_init_urb - initializes a urb so that it can be used by a USB driver
 * @urb: pointer to the urb to initialize
 *
 * Initializes a urb so that the USB subsystem can use it properly.
 *
 * If a urb is created with a call to usb_alloc_urb() it is not
 * necessary to call this function.  Only use this if you allocate the
 * space for a struct urb on your own.  If you call this function, be
 * careful when freeing the memory for your urb that it is no longer in
 * use by the USB core.
 *
 * Only use this function if you _really_ understand what you are doing.
 */

I see that there are some sound drivers which embed URBs in larger
structures too, so if this is some tree-wide campaign there is a risk
of breaking them too.

Regards,
Michal