On some architectures like m68k, alignof(void*) is 2, not sizeof(void*)
(which is 4). So the natural alignment of struct Option is 2 and
sizeof(Option) == 26.
However, each variable placed in the SYSTEMD_OPTIONS ELF section via
_OPTION() carries _alignptr_ (= __attribute__((aligned(sizeof(void*))))),
which forces each entry to start at a 4-byte boundary. The linker
therefore inserts 2 bytes of padding between adjacent entries, producing
an actual stride of 28 in the section.
option_parse() iterates over the section with pointer arithmetic
("opt++"), which advances by sizeof(Option) == 26 and lands inside the
padding. The fields read back as zero, and since commit
cf88903637
("tree-wide: get rid of most uses of ALIGN_PTR") added the ordering
assertion below, the resulting "0 < 0" trips it when running --help:
Assertion 'opt->id < (opt + 1)->id' failed at src/shared/options.c:116, function option_parse(). Aborting.
#0 0xc0a7b248 in ?? () from /usr/lib/m68k-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
#1 0xc0a7b2ce in pthread_kill () from /usr/lib/m68k-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
#2 0xc0a2edc6 in raise () from /usr/lib/m68k-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
#3 0xc0a1c128 in abort () from /usr/lib/m68k-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
#4 0xc05c6f78 in option_parse (options=0x0, options_end=0x0, state=0xc09ca968) at ../src/shared/options.c:116
Fix this by applying _alignptr_ to the struct definition itself, so that
sizeof(Option) is padded up to a multiple of sizeof(void*) and matches
the actual on-disk stride. Add an assert_cc() so any future regression
is caught at compile time.
The same latent bug applies to Verb and TestFunc, which use the same
section-placement pattern. Their natural sizeof was already a multiple
of sizeof(void*) so no crash was observed, but apply the same fix
defensively.
Follow-up for
cf889036377092cbec6c5ec86fdf0dc1c9326032
Co-developed-by: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
free_func_t destroy;
} SimpleCleanup;
-typedef struct StaticDestructor {
+/* Note: see the comment on struct Option in options.h for why _alignptr_ is required here. */
+typedef struct _alignptr_ StaticDestructor {
StaticDestructorType type;
union {
SimpleCleanup simple;
OPTION_HELP_ENTRY_VERBATIM = 1U << 6, /* Same, but use the long_code in the first column as written */
} OptionFlags;
-typedef struct Option {
+/* Note: the alignment attribute must match the one applied to each variable via _alignptr_ in
+ * _OPTION() below. Otherwise the struct's sizeof and the actual stride between consecutive entries
+ * placed in the SYSTEMD_OPTIONS section would not match on architectures where the natural
+ * alignment of the struct is smaller than sizeof(void*) (e.g. m68k). That would cause the
+ * pointer-arithmetic-based iteration over the section to read from padding bytes. */
+typedef struct _alignptr_ Option {
int id;
OptionFlags flags;
char short_code;
uintptr_t data;
const char *help;
} Option;
+assert_cc(sizeof(Option) % sizeof(void*) == 0);
#define _OPTION(counter, fl, sc, lc, mv, d, h) \
_section_("SYSTEMD_OPTIONS") \
/* Provide a convenient way to check if we're running in CI. */
const char* ci_environment(void);
-typedef struct TestFunc {
+/* Note: see the comment on struct Option in options.h for why _alignptr_ is required here. */
+typedef struct _alignptr_ TestFunc {
union f {
void (*void_func)(void);
int (*int_func)(void);
bool has_ret:1;
bool sd_booted:1;
} TestFunc;
+assert_cc(sizeof(TestFunc) % sizeof(void*) == 0);
/* See static-destruct.h for an explanation of how this works. */
#define REGISTER_TEST(func, ...) \
VERB_GROUP_MARKER = 1 << 2, /* Fake verb entry to separate groups */
} VerbFlags;
-typedef struct {
+/* Note: see the comment on struct Option in options.h for why _alignptr_ is required here. */
+typedef struct _alignptr_ {
const char *verb;
unsigned min_args, max_args;
VerbFlags flags;
const char *argspec;
const char *help;
} Verb;
+assert_cc(sizeof(Verb) % sizeof(void*) == 0);
#define _VERB_DATA(d, v, a, amin, amax, f, dat, h) \
_section_("SYSTEMD_VERBS") \