Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting

From	Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Newsgroups	linux.kernel
Subject	Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting
Date	2015-08-26 09:30 +0200
Message-ID	<q1DjI-7nv-11@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References	(5 earlier) <q1jkZ-3k4-7@gated-at.bofh.it> <q1jEm-3GJ-5@gated-at.bofh.it> <q1AYx-3Q5-1@gated-at.bofh.it> <q1D0l-71b-9@gated-at.bofh.it> <q1D0l-71b-7@gated-at.bofh.it>
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* Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 2015-08-25 at 22:07 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> > > No, the current MAX_ERRNO is probably not big enough if this scheme is successful,
> > > and I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be successful: I think this feature
> > > would be the biggest usability feature added to Linux system calls and to Linux
> > > system tooling in the last 10 years or so.
> > Don't be silly. It's a horrible idea. People would want to 
> > internationalize the strings etc, and nobody would use the extended 
> > versions anyway, since nobody uses raw system calls.
> 
> That's a good point, and think that least in the netlink case it'd be much 
> better to say which attribute was the one that had an issue, and that has an 
> obvious binary encoding rather than encoding that in a string.

So in older discussions about this I suggested a solution for that: also returning 
(in a channel separate from errnos) the byte offset to the field that caused the 
error, plus a string - and leaving errnos alone.

This only matters for those (few) system calls that have a large attribute space: 
perf and some of the scheduler syscalls are such.

With this scheme arbitrarily granular error handling can be implemented:

 - the laziest can just use the errno like usual, which catches 90% of the apps.

 - the somewhat sophisticated would print the human readable string (or a
   translation thereof). Would cover another 9%. (This percentage might increase 
   over time, as the strings become more widely used.)

 - tools with a case of obsessive-compulsive perfectionism would use the structure
   offset to programmatically react to the error condition, and would use the
   human-readable string to explain the precise reason. Would cover another 1% of
   tools.

... but back then I didn't feel like complicating an error recovery ABI for the 
needs of the 1%, robust error handling is all about simplicity: if it's not 
simple, tools won't use it.

Thanks,

	Ingo
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Thread

[PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-08-24 16:40 +0200
  [PATCH v2 5/6] perf/x86/intel/pt: Use extended error reporting in event initialization Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-08-24 16:40 +0200
  [PATCH v2 6/6] perf/x86/intel/bts: Use extended error reporting in event initialization Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-08-24 16:40 +0200
  [PATCH v2 1/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-08-24 16:40 +0200
    Re: [PATCH v2 1/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Andy Shevchenko <andy.shevchenko@gmail.com> - 2015-08-31 20:50 +0200
      Re: [PATCH v2 1/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-09-01 08:40 +0200
  [PATCH v2 3/6] perf: Annotate some of the error codes with perf_err() Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-08-24 16:40 +0200
  [PATCH v2 2/6] perf: Add file name and line number to perf extended error reports Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-08-24 16:40 +0200
  [PATCH v2 4/6] perf/x86: Annotate some of the error codes with perf_err() Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-08-24 16:40 +0200
  Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2015-08-25 10:30 +0200
  Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> - 2015-08-25 11:00 +0200
    Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2015-08-25 11:10 +0200
      Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2015-08-25 11:20 +0200
        Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> - 2015-08-25 11:40 +0200
          Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2015-08-25 12:10 +0200
            Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> - 2015-08-25 12:30 +0200
              Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2015-08-26 07:00 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> - 2015-08-26 09:10 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2015-08-26 09:30 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-08-26 19:00 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@kernel.org> - 2015-08-26 23:00 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> - 2015-08-26 20:50 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2015-08-26 22:10 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> - 2015-08-26 22:30 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error  reporting Vince Weaver <vince@deater.net> - 2015-08-26 23:00 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> - 2015-08-26 23:00 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error  reporting Vince Weaver <vince@deater.net> - 2015-08-26 23:20 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2015-08-28 12:10 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@infradead.org> - 2015-08-26 23:10 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2015-08-26 09:30 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> - 2015-08-26 09:40 +0200
                Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2015-08-26 09:10 +0200
        Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] perf: Introduce extended syscall error reporting Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> - 2015-08-26 13:40 +0200

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