From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Vasiliy Kulikov Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:35:11 +0000 Subject: Re: [PATCH 04/10] x86: mce: fix error handling Message-Id: <20100729093511.GB7143@albatros> List-Id: References: <1280335185-23265-1-git-send-email-segooon@gmail.com> <4C5063D4.4070108@linux.intel.com> <20100728171327.GA24149@albatros> <4C5066CB.7010009@linux.intel.com> In-Reply-To: <4C5066CB.7010009@linux.intel.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Andi Kleen Cc: kernel-janitors@vger.kernel.org, Thomas Gleixner , Ingo Molnar , "H. Peter Anvin" , x86@kernel.org, Hidetoshi Seto , Borislav Petkov , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 19:20 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote: > > >I'm agree with you that if allocation fails at boot time, we are dead :) > >But this coding style breaking rules that result from some functions > >_must_ be checked for errors. Maybe we should add BUG_ON() here or > >indicate someway that we have no ideas how to handle error? > > What rules exactly? I don't think any of those functions are > declared with __must_check IMO memmory allocation fails are dangerous in kernel mode. As it is probably not exploitable because of boot time, it can destroy some sensitive data like dirty disk caches those are going to be written on disk. > > Coding style should never get in the way of what is right. > > The classic way to explicitely discard a return value is a cast to > void, but that is generally considered > ugly in the Linux kernel. > > One could possibly add a comment about this at least. > > -Andi >