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authorAlexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>2026-10-01 14:52:55 +0000
committerKumar Kartikeya Dwivedi <memxor@gmail.com>2026-10-01 18:39:27 +0200
commit33a154a96e71a34a1bcca9f40da343dbbf7b38b4 (patch)
tree543be8029ab3d8a3a63994ae23385a053ed30029 /Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst
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selftests/bpf: Test packet range of pointers sharing an idgrafted
Add tests where two packet pointers share an id and tightening one pointer's umax from its var_off would put it less than their constant distance from the other's umax: with an index & 0x38 capped at 50, the base pointer keeps umax 50, so the pointer 8 bytes further on must keep umax 58, even though its known bits allow at most 56. These refused a valid program or accepted an out-of-bounds access before the fix: - check the advanced copy, load through the base: valid, was refused; - check the base, load the byte at base + 1 through a copy advanced by 8: was accepted; - check base + 4, load 4 bytes at base + 2 through base + 8: reads two bytes past the checked range, was accepted; - the same as the second with data_meta pointers checked against data: was accepted. These pass with and without the fix and cover nearby paths: - subtract an unknown scalar from a checked pointer and load below it (the range is kept across a new id); - reach a load through two paths whose checks cover 8 and 7 bytes after the loaded pointer; the second path must not be pruned by the first; - spill a copy of a pointer, check the pointer, fill the copy and load one byte past the checked range: the load is refused, and the copy has the range of the check. Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20261001145255.855630-2-alexei.starovoitov@gmail.com Signed-off-by: Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi <memxor@gmail.com>
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+=============================
+Device Driver Design Patterns
+=============================
+
+This document describes a few common design patterns found in device drivers.
+It is likely that subsystem maintainers will ask driver developers to
+conform to these design patterns.
+
+1. State Container
+2. container_of()
+
+
+1. State Container
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+While the kernel contains a few device drivers that assume that they will
+only be probed() once on a certain system (singletons), it is custom to assume
+that the device the driver binds to will appear in several instances. This
+means that the probe() function and all callbacks need to be reentrant.
+
+The most common way to achieve this is to use the state container design
+pattern. It usually has this form::
+
+ struct foo {
+ spinlock_t lock; /* Example member */
+ (...)
+ };
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ foo = devm_kzalloc(dev, sizeof(*foo), GFP_KERNEL);
+ if (!foo)
+ return -ENOMEM;
+ spin_lock_init(&foo->lock);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+This will create an instance of struct foo in memory every time probe() is
+called. This is our state container for this instance of the device driver.
+Of course it is then necessary to always pass this instance of the
+state around to all functions that need access to the state and its members.
+
+For example, if the driver is registering an interrupt handler, you would
+pass around a pointer to struct foo like this::
+
+ static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = arg;
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ (...)
+ ret = request_irq(irq, foo_handler, 0, "foo", foo);
+ }
+
+This way you always get a pointer back to the correct instance of foo in
+your interrupt handler.
+
+
+2. container_of()
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Continuing on the above example we add an offloaded work::
+
+ struct foo {
+ spinlock_t lock;
+ struct workqueue_struct *wq;
+ struct work_struct offload;
+ (...)
+ };
+
+ static void foo_work(struct work_struct *work)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = container_of(work, struct foo, offload);
+
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = arg;
+
+ queue_work(foo->wq, &foo->offload);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ foo->wq = create_singlethread_workqueue("foo-wq");
+ INIT_WORK(&foo->offload, foo_work);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+The design pattern is the same for an hrtimer or something similar that will
+return a single argument which is a pointer to a struct member in the
+callback.
+
+container_of() is a macro defined in <linux/container_of.h>
+
+What container_of() does is to obtain a pointer to the containing struct from
+a pointer to a member by a simple subtraction using the offsetof() macro from
+standard C, which allows something similar to object oriented behaviours.
+Notice that the contained member must not be a pointer, but an actual member
+for this to work.
+
+We can see here that we avoid having global pointers to our struct foo *
+instance this way, while still keeping the number of parameters passed to the
+work function to a single pointer.