On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 10:57:23PM +0530, Amol Grover wrote: Looks like this causes a build error. Always please build test your patches in the very least. And I also did not understand how RCU_INIT_POINTER can even be used outside of a function. In C, executable code cannot be outside functions. Is doing the following not sufficient to fix the sparse issue? thanks, - Joel ---8<----------------------- diff --git a/kernel/audit.c b/kernel/audit.c index 49b6049b26ac..c5d4b5a2dea1 100644 --- a/kernel/audit.c +++ b/kernel/audit.c @@ -108,8 +108,8 @@ struct auditd_connection { struct net *net; struct rcu_head rcu; }; -static struct auditd_connection __rcu *auditd_conn; -RCU_INIT_POINTER(auditd_conn); +static struct auditd_connection __rcu *auditd_conn = NULL; + static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(auditd_conn_lock); /* If audit_rate_limit is non-zero, limit the rate of sending audit records