Hi,

While porting NetBSD to a powerpc platform, I stumbled across a bizarre
problem which manifests itself most obviously by corrupting the output of
ps(1). Matt Thomas has also reported this effect to me privately. I
tracked this one down to the fact that sizeof(struct kinfo_proc2) is
different for the kernel compared to userland built from the same
source.

Further investigation showed that the compiler was inserting unnecessary
padding just before p_siglist in struct kinfo_proc2.

After yet more digging, this turned out to be caused by an unrelated
alignment attribute in arch/powerpc/marvell/marvell_intr.h:103 (which is
visible to gcc only when _KERNEL is defined).

For some reason, after gcc sees that alignment attribute, it seems to
apply the same alignment to other u_int32_t arrays, hence the extra
padding for p_siglist. (Note: I haven't verified how widespread this
effect is elsewhere).

The alignment attribute in that imask_t typedef is not strictly required
as everywhere an imask_t is instanciated, it has an extra alignment
qualifier anyway.

Unless I'm completely off the mark, the effect of the imask_t typedef's
alignment attribute should not be propagated elsewhere.

Comments?

Cheers, Steve

-- 

Wasabi Systems Inc. - The NetBSD Company - http://www.wasabisystems.com/