linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/2] scsi: target+fcoe: replace -EEXIST with -EBUSY in module

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Message-ID: <b1e372cacf08a758e06ce7504c6cfaf7778bc6f3.camel@HansenPartnership.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2025 23:27:30 -0500
From: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
To: Daniel Gomez <da.gomez@...nel.org>, "Martin K. Petersen"
	 <martin.petersen@...cle.com>, Hannes Reinecke <hare@...e.de>
Cc: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@...nel.org>, Petr Pavlu <petr.pavlu@...e.com>, 
 Sami Tolvanen <samitolvanen@...gle.com>, Aaron Tomlin
 <atomlin@...mlin.com>, Lucas De Marchi <demarchi@...nel.org>,
 linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org, target-devel@...r.kernel.org, 
 linux-modules@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Daniel Gomez
 <da.gomez@...sung.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2] scsi: target+fcoe: replace -EEXIST with -EBUSY in
 module_init() paths

On Sat, 2025-12-20 at 04:37 +0100, Daniel Gomez wrote:
> The error code -EEXIST is reserved by the kernel module loader to
> indicate that a module with the same name is already loaded. When a
> module's init function returns -EEXIST, kmod interprets this as
> "module already loaded" and reports success instead of failure [1].

That reference doesn't sufficiently explain why this error code should
be unique to modules.  EEXIST is used all over the kernel to indicate
that something being attempted has already happened or does already
exist and that seems perfectly logical .... please explain why you're
trying to push it back to being a single use case for modules alone.

Regards,

James