[PATCH] fork: Honor task_struct's declared alignment

From: Karl Mehltretter

Date: Fri Jul 10 2026 - 08:48:36 EST


Since commit cb7ca40a3882 ("x86/fpu: Make task_struct::thread constant
size"), struct task_struct is declared __attribute__((aligned(64))) on
all architectures.

But fork_init() still sets the task_struct slab cache's alignment to

align = max(L1_CACHE_BYTES, ARCH_MIN_TASKALIGN)

which is smaller than 64 on architectures whose cache lines are below
64 bytes: e.g. 32 on ARMv5.

In practice plain SLUB happens to hand out 64-byte-aligned objects
anyway. With CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG_ON the red-zone padding shifts objects
to the requested alignment.

With CONFIG_UBSAN_ALIGNMENT=y a boot on QEMU versatilepb (ARM926EJ-S,
v7.2-rc2, gcc 13.3) floods the console with reports like:

UBSAN: misaligned-access in include/linux/sched.h:2087:9
member access within misaligned address c295d7e0 for type 'struct task_struct'
which requires 64 byte alignment
CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 15 Comm: pr/ttyAMA-1 Not tainted 7.2.0-rc2 #1 VOLUNTARY

Set the slab alignment to at least the type's declared alignment.

Fixes: cb7ca40a3882 ("x86/fpu: Make task_struct::thread constant size")
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-fable-5
Signed-off-by: Karl Mehltretter <kmehltretter@xxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/fork.c | 3 ++-
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
index f0e2e131a9a5..b85cf1343329 100644
--- a/kernel/fork.c
+++ b/kernel/fork.c
@@ -857,7 +857,8 @@ void __init fork_init(void)
#ifndef ARCH_MIN_TASKALIGN
#define ARCH_MIN_TASKALIGN 0
#endif
- int align = max_t(int, L1_CACHE_BYTES, ARCH_MIN_TASKALIGN);
+ int align = max3(L1_CACHE_BYTES, ARCH_MIN_TASKALIGN,
+ __alignof__(struct task_struct));
unsigned long useroffset, usersize;

/* create a slab on which task_structs can be allocated */
--
2.39.5 (Apple Git-154)