lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2002]   [Mar]   [11]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
SubjectRe: [PATCH 2.5.6] New wireless driver API part 2
From
On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 04:50:11PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
>
> Overall looks good. My only minor objection would be that this function
> should return an error value. Clearly the kmalloc can fail, at least.
>
> Jeff

Thanks for the quick review (as usual), very much appreciated.

Now, for the return value...
I've debated this precise point. Here is the comment that I
wrote in the code you just quoted :
/* Note : we don't return an error to the driver, because
* the driver would not know what to do about it. It can't
* return an error to the user, because the event is not
* initiated by a user request.
* The best the driver could do is to log an error message.
* We will do it ourselves instead...
*/
The failure to deliver an event to the user is not critical,
and I don't really see what the driver code would do with a return
code. In fact, event delivery to user space is not reliable (netlink
may drop it in case its queues are full - this is more likely than
kmalloc failure), and my code only check a few of those failure
conditions, so the driver has no way to know if the message reached
its intended destination.
In fact, I eliminated the return code *on purpose*, to prevent
driver writer to do stupid things (like shutting down the driver) or
adding additional log message (waste at this point).
Convincing enough ?

Have fun...

Jean
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:24    [W:0.044 / U:0.476 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site