Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 1/3] Add mcelog support for xen platform

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>]

* Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> wrote:

> Borislav Petkov <bp@amd64.org> writes:
> 
> > Because, if you'd hooked into it, just imagine one fine day, when we
> > remove mcelog support, what screaming the xen people will be doing when
> > mcelog doesn't work anymore.
> 
> That's simple. /dev/mcelog is a widely used user space ABI 
> [...]

*COUGH* *SPLUTTER* *LAUGH*.

Thanks for making my day with the self-serving exaggeration of 
the year.

In truth /dev/mcelog is one of the crappiest ABIs Linux has - 
full stop. As a result it's barely used by anyone who can avoid 
it - its main usecase is the utility you wrote for it and some 
enterprise folks who desperately need that data and don't care 
how they get it. The mcelog user-space utility sucks too, 
understandably.

Nevertheless we probably have to keep the ABI around until a 
truly better replacement is out there (the RAS daemon for 
example) and mcelog usage eclipses to obscurity, but by all 
means we want to limit its further spreading /dev/mcelog to 
areas it has not polluted yet ...

Thanks,

	Ingo