[PATCH v4 17/27] net/iavf: avoid rte malloc in VF mailbox for IPsec

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Fri, 13 Feb 2026 10:26:28 +0000
Anatoly Burakov <anatoly.burakov at intel.com> wrote:

> Currently, when calling down into the VF mailbox, IPsec code will use
> dynamic memory allocation (rte_malloc one at that!) to allocate VF message
> structures which are ~40 bytes in size, and then immediately frees them.
> This is wasteful and unnecessary, so use stack allocation instead.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Anatoly Burakov <anatoly.burakov at intel.com>
> ---

AI spotted this:

Patch 17/27 — net/iavf: avoid rte malloc in VF mailbox for IPsec
Warning (Correctness — Uninitialized stack memory)

The stack-allocated anonymous structs (sa_req, sa_resp, sp_req, sp_resp) are not zero-initialized. The originals used rte_malloc (not rte_zmalloc), so this isn't a regression per se — the old code also didn't zero the buffers. However, since these are sent as virtchnl messages, it would be safer to add = {0} for defense in depth, particularly since individual field assignment may miss padding.

This is lower priority than patch 22 since the old code had the same issue.