The variable-sized buffer buf in struct btrfs_ioctl_search_args_v2 is declared as __u64[], but it holds a packed byte stream of search results, where all offsets into the buffer are in bytes. Declaring buf as __u64[] makes it easy for user space to write incorrect pointer arithmetic: adding a byte offset directly to a __u64 pointer scales the offset by 8, landing at byte position offset*8 instead of offset. This recently caused an infinite loop in btrfs-progs: the accessor read all-zero data from misaddressed items, which fed zeroed search keys back into the ioctl loop and spun forever. The issue was worked around at the time by disabling TREE_SEARCH_V2 entirely in btrfs-progs (d73e69824854: "btrfs-progs: temporarily disable usage of v2 of search tree ioctl"). The kernel side already treats buf as a byte buffer, so change the declaration to __u8[] to match the actual semantics and prevent similar misuse in user space. The change is ABI compatible: both the structure size and alignment are unchanged.
Unified · Split
| @@ -598,7 +598,7 @@ struct btrfs_ioctl_search_args_v2 { · 597 unmodified lines | ||
| 598 | 598 | __u64 buf_size; /* in - size of buffer |
| 599 | 599 | * out - on EOVERFLOW: needed size |
| 600 | 600 | * to store item */ |
| 601 | − __u64 buf[]; /* out - found items */ | |
| 601 | + __u8 buf[]; /* out - found items */ | |
| 602 | 602 | }; |
| 603 | 603 | |
| 604 | 604 | /* With a @src_length of zero, the range from @src_offset->EOF is cloned! */ |