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From: Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>
To: monstr@monstr.eu
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, michal.simek@petalogix.com,
	arnd@arndb.de, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org,
	fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp, akpm@linux-foundation.org,
	mingo@elte.hu, joerg.roedel@amd.com
Subject: Re: Generic DMA - BUG_ON
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:53:50 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20100120105350.GA23394@flint.arm.linux.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1263982111-24123-1-git-send-email-monstr@monstr.eu>

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 11:08:30AM +0100, monstr@monstr.eu wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I have this patch in my repo. I just added BUG_ON for dma ops.
> The reason for that is if driver not setup ops correctly than
> the system do bad access to any memory space without any visible reason.
> BUG_ON points to it and helps to solve where the problem is.

I have a question of principle to raise here.

If you have code which does:

	if (ops->foo)
		ops->foo();

and ops is NULL, then this code will oops; you will get a full register
dump and backtrace.  You can use this information along with markup_oops.pl
to find out where the problem is.

If you add a BUG_ON() to this, the only additional information you end
up with is (possibly) a nice friendly message which tells you the file
and line number - but you add additional run-time tests to the code.

The question is: is this worth it?  Is there some problem with the
original oops that makes the problem hard to find?  Should we be using
BUG_ON() to augment normal oopses in this way?

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:

  parent reply	other threads:[~2010-01-20 10:53 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2010-01-20 10:08 Generic DMA - BUG_ON monstr
2010-01-20 10:08 ` monstr
2010-01-20 10:08 ` [PATCH] asm-generic: dma: Add BUG_ON for uninitialized dma_ops monstr
2010-01-20 10:48   ` Alexey Dobriyan
2010-01-20 11:00     ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2010-01-20 10:56   ` Joerg Roedel
2010-01-22  1:11   ` FUJITA Tomonori
2010-01-20 10:53 ` Russell King [this message]
2010-01-20 10:53   ` Generic DMA - BUG_ON Russell King
2010-01-20 11:00   ` Joerg Roedel
2010-01-20 11:00     ` Joerg Roedel
2010-01-20 11:18     ` Michal Simek
2010-01-20 19:03       ` Arnd Bergmann
2010-01-21 15:51     ` Steven J. Magnani
2010-01-21 17:53       ` Russell King
2010-01-21 17:53         ` Russell King

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