Re: [PATCH] selftests/user_events: Avoid taking address of packed member in perf_test

[Andrew Morton]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2025 17:04:39 +0530 Ankit Khushwaha 
<ankitkhushwaha.li...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Accessing 'reg.write_index' directly triggers a -Waddress-of-packed-member
> warning due to potential unaligned pointer access:
> 
> perf_test.c:239:38: warning: taking address of packed member 'write_index'
> of class or structure 'user_reg' may result in an unaligned pointer value 
> [-Waddress-of-packed-member]
>   239 |         ASSERT_NE(-1, write(self->data_fd, &reg.write_index,
>       |                                             ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
> 
> Use memcpy() instead to safely copy the value and avoid unaligned pointer
> access across architectures.
> 
> ...
>
> --- a/tools/testing/selftests/user_events/perf_test.c
> +++ b/tools/testing/selftests/user_events/perf_test.c
> @@ -201,6 +201,7 @@ TEST_F(user, perf_empty_events) {
>       struct perf_event_mmap_page *perf_page;
>       int page_size = sysconf(_SC_PAGESIZE);
>       int id, fd;
> +     __u32 write_index;
>       __u32 *val;
>  
>       reg.size = sizeof(reg);
> @@ -236,7 +237,8 @@ TEST_F(user, perf_empty_events) {
>       ASSERT_EQ(1 << reg.enable_bit, self->check);
>  
>       /* Ensure write shows up at correct offset */
> -     ASSERT_NE(-1, write(self->data_fd, &reg.write_index,
> +     memcpy(&write_index, &reg.write_index, sizeof(reg.write_index));
> +     ASSERT_NE(-1, write(self->data_fd, &write_index,
>                           sizeof(reg.write_index)));

Simply casting &write_index to void* would fix this?

>       val = (void *)(((char *)perf_page) + perf_page->data_offset);
>       ASSERT_EQ(PERF_RECORD_SAMPLE, *val);