linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 3.12-rc7] KVM: Fix modprobe failure for kvm_intel/kvm

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Message-ID: <CA+55aFzqumDX8hRyC4avbpA2g_RRb28ZPYk=_-4atGJ=67Zu1A@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:33:37 -0700
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Raghavendra K T <raghavendra.kt@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc:	Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
	Tim Gardner <tim.gardner@...onical.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"the arch/x86 maintainers" <x86@...nel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Gleb Natapov <gleb@...hat.com>,
	Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@...hat.com>,
	Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>,
	KVM list <kvm@...r.kernel.org>,
	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3.12-rc7] KVM: Fix modprobe failure for kvm_intel/kvm_amd

On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Raghavendra K T
<raghavendra.kt@...ux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> Could one solution be cascading actual error
> that is lost in fs/debugfs/inode.c:__create_file(), so that we could
> take correct action in case of failure of debugfs_create_dir()?
>
> (ugly side is we increase total number of params for __create_file to
> 6). or I hope there could be some better solution.

The solution to this would be to simply return an error-pointer. See
<linux/err.h>. That's what we do for most complex subsystems that
return a pointer to a struct: rather than returning "NULL" as an
error, return the actual error number encoded in the pointer itself.

But that would require every user of debugfs_create_dir() to be
updated to check errors using IS_ERR() instead of checking against
NULL, and there's quite a few of them.

So I think just making the error be EEXIST is a simpler solution right now.

              Linus
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