Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sun, 14 Jan 2001 12:46:59 +0100 | From | Andi Kleen <> | Subject | Re: 2.4.0 + iproute2 |
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On Sun, Jan 14, 2001 at 03:36:55AM -0800, David S. Miller wrote: > > Andi Kleen writes: > > How would you pass the extended errors? As strings or as to be > > defined new numbers? I would prefer strings, because the number > > namespace could turn out to be as nasty to maintain as the current > > sysctl one. > > Textual error messages for system calls never belong in the kernel. > Put it in glibc or wherever.
This just means that a table needs to be kept in sync between glibc and netlink, and if someone e.g. gets a new CBQ module he would need to update glibc. It's also bad for maintainers, because patches for tables of number tend to always reject ;)
Textual error messages are e.g. used by plan9 and would be somewhat similar to /proc. It would probably waste a few bytes in the kernel, but that's not too bad, given the work it saves. e.g. rusty's code usually has a debug option that you can set and where each EINVAL outputs a error message; i always found that very useful and sometimes hacked that into other subsystems in my private tree.
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