it is set: [...] if (!have_sta) { sta = sta_info_alloc(sdata, cbss->bssid, GFP_KERNEL); if (!sta) return -ENOMEM; } [...] if (!have_sta) { [...] sta->sta.supp_rates[cbss->channel->band] = rates; [...] For some reason the compiler doesn't understand this and warns. While this is not a problem in the code itself, we can avoid polluting the build logs with false positives by setting sta to NULL on declaration and checking for sta instead of !have_sta in the second if. Reported-by: Tony Lindgren Signed-off-by: Luciano Coelho Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg ,‘­