netdev - Re: [Patch net] atm: remove an unnecessary loop

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Date:   Fri, 13 Jan 2017 16:30:18 -0800
From:   Cong Wang <xiyou.wangcong@...il.com>
To:     Chas Williams <3chas3@...il.com>
Cc:     David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Francois Romieu <romieu@...zoreil.com>,
        Linux Kernel Network Developers <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>,
        Andrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: [Patch net] atm: remove an unnecessary loop

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 3:54 PM, Chas Williams <3chas3@...il.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2017-01-13 at 10:20 -0800, Cong Wang wrote:
>> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 9:10 AM, David Miller <davem@...emloft.net> wrote:
>> > From: Francois Romieu <romieu@...zoreil.com>
>> > Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2017 01:07:00 +0100
>> >
>> >> Were alloc_skb moved one level up in the call stack, there would be
>> >> no need to use the new wait api in the subsequent page, thus easing
>> >> pre 3.19 longterm kernel maintenance (at least those on korg page).
>> >>
>> >> But it tastes a tad bit too masochistic.
>> >
>> > Lack of error handling of allocation failure is always a huge red
>> > flag.  We even long ago tried to do something like this for TCP FIN
>> > handling.
>> >
>> > It's dumb, it doesn't work.
>> >
>> > Therefore I agree that the correct fix is to move the SKB allocation
>> > up one level to vcc_sendmsg() and make it handle errors properly.
>>
>> If you can justify API is not broken by doing that, I am more than happy
>> to do it, as I already stated in the latter patch:
>
> The man page for sendmsg() allows for ENOMEM.  See below.
>

Errno is just one part, you miss the behavior behind the logic.

>>
>> "Of course, the logic itself is suspicious, other sendmsg()
>> could handle skb allocation failure very well, not sure
>> why ATM has to wait for a successful one here. But probably
>> it is too late to change since the errno and behavior is
>> visible to user-space. So just leave the logic as it is."
>>
>> For some reason, no one reads that patch. :-/
>
> I read it and I agree.  I think it should be moved up/conflated with
> vcc_sendmsg().  vcc_sendmsg() can already return an errno for other
> conditions so if so has written something where they are explicitly
> not expecting a ENOMEM, we really can't help them.

Nope, the reason is never ENOMEM is expected or not. The current
_behavior_ behind this logic might be relied on by user-space.
The behavior here is, when allocation fails, kernel will retry under
certain circumstances, for example, if any fatal signal pending,
returns ERESTARTSYS, etc.. This is what I worry, not just ENOMEM
or not, which is too obvious.

Of course, I could be too conservative, I'd rather not to break things
for -stable at least.

Thanks.