[PATCH v2] [net] ipv6: Ensure natural alignment of const ipv6 loopback and router addresses

From: Helge Deller
Date: Fri Jan 26 2024 - 04:17:58 EST


On a parisc64 kernel I sometimes notice this kernel warning:
Kernel unaligned access to 0x40ff8814 at ndisc_send_skb+0xc0/0x4d8

The address 0x40ff8814 points to the in6addr_linklocal_allrouters
variable and the warning simply means that some ipv6 function tries to
read a 64-bit word directly from the not-64-bit aligned
in6addr_linklocal_allrouters variable.

Unaligned accesses are non-critical as the architecture or exception
handlers usually will fix it up at runtime. Nevertheless it may trigger
a performance penality for some architectures. For details read the
"unaligned-memory-access" kernel documentation.

The patch below ensures that the ipv6 loopback and router addresses will
always be naturally aligned. This prevents the unaligned accesses for
all architectures.

Signed-off-by: Helge Deller <deller@xxxxxx>
Fixes: 034dfc5df99eb ("ipv6: export in6addr_loopback to modules")
Acked-by: Paolo Abeni <pabeni@xxxxxxxxxx>

--
v2:
- Added A-b from Paolo
- Rephrased parts of commit message
- resent with [net] tag

---
diff --git a/net/ipv6/addrconf_core.c b/net/ipv6/addrconf_core.c
index 507a8353a6bd..813e009b4d0e 100644
--- a/net/ipv6/addrconf_core.c
+++ b/net/ipv6/addrconf_core.c
@@ -220,19 +220,26 @@ const struct ipv6_stub *ipv6_stub __read_mostly = &(struct ipv6_stub) {
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(ipv6_stub);

/* IPv6 Wildcard Address and Loopback Address defined by RFC2553 */
-const struct in6_addr in6addr_loopback = IN6ADDR_LOOPBACK_INIT;
+const struct in6_addr in6addr_loopback __aligned(BITS_PER_LONG/8)
+ = IN6ADDR_LOOPBACK_INIT;
EXPORT_SYMBOL(in6addr_loopback);
-const struct in6_addr in6addr_any = IN6ADDR_ANY_INIT;
+const struct in6_addr in6addr_any __aligned(BITS_PER_LONG/8)
+ = IN6ADDR_ANY_INIT;
EXPORT_SYMBOL(in6addr_any);
-const struct in6_addr in6addr_linklocal_allnodes = IN6ADDR_LINKLOCAL_ALLNODES_INIT;
+const struct in6_addr in6addr_linklocal_allnodes __aligned(BITS_PER_LONG/8)
+ = IN6ADDR_LINKLOCAL_ALLNODES_INIT;
EXPORT_SYMBOL(in6addr_linklocal_allnodes);
-const struct in6_addr in6addr_linklocal_allrouters = IN6ADDR_LINKLOCAL_ALLROUTERS_INIT;
+const struct in6_addr in6addr_linklocal_allrouters __aligned(BITS_PER_LONG/8)
+ = IN6ADDR_LINKLOCAL_ALLROUTERS_INIT;
EXPORT_SYMBOL(in6addr_linklocal_allrouters);
-const struct in6_addr in6addr_interfacelocal_allnodes = IN6ADDR_INTERFACELOCAL_ALLNODES_INIT;
+const struct in6_addr in6addr_interfacelocal_allnodes __aligned(BITS_PER_LONG/8)
+ = IN6ADDR_INTERFACELOCAL_ALLNODES_INIT;
EXPORT_SYMBOL(in6addr_interfacelocal_allnodes);
-const struct in6_addr in6addr_interfacelocal_allrouters = IN6ADDR_INTERFACELOCAL_ALLROUTERS_INIT;
+const struct in6_addr in6addr_interfacelocal_allrouters __aligned(BITS_PER_LONG/8)
+ = IN6ADDR_INTERFACELOCAL_ALLROUTERS_INIT;
EXPORT_SYMBOL(in6addr_interfacelocal_allrouters);
-const struct in6_addr in6addr_sitelocal_allrouters = IN6ADDR_SITELOCAL_ALLROUTERS_INIT;
+const struct in6_addr in6addr_sitelocal_allrouters __aligned(BITS_PER_LONG/8)
+ = IN6ADDR_SITELOCAL_ALLROUTERS_INIT;
EXPORT_SYMBOL(in6addr_sitelocal_allrouters);

static void snmp6_free_dev(struct inet6_dev *idev)