Re: [PATCH v2 3/4] secure_seq: use siphash24 instead of md5_transform

Hi David,

On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 6:56 PM, David Miller [off-list ref] wrote:

Just marking the structure __packed, whether necessary or not, makes
the compiler assume that the members are not aligned and causes
byte-by-byte accesses to be performed for words.
Never, _ever_, use __packed unless absolutely necessary, it pessimizes
the code on cpus that require proper alignment of types.

Oh, jimminy cricket, I did not realize that it made assignments
byte-by-byte *always*. So what options am I left with? What
immediately comes to mind are:

1)

struct {
    u64 a;
    u32 b;
    u32 c;
    u16 d;
    u8 end[];
} a = {
    .a = a,
    .b = b,
    .c = c,
    .d = d
};
siphash24(&a, offsetof(typeof(a), end), key);

2)

u8 bytes[sizeof(u64) + sizeof(u32) * 2 + sizeof(u16)];
*(u64 *)&bytes[0] = a;
*(u32 *)&bytes[sizeof(u64)] = b;
*(u32 *)&bytes[sizeof(u64) + sizeof(u32)] = c;
*(u16 *)&bytes[sizeof(u64) + sizeof(u32) * 2] = d;
siphash24(bytes, sizeof(bytes), key);


Personally I find (1) a bit neater than (2). What's your opinion?

Jason