Re: [PATCH v3 03/10] liveupdate: Allow file handlers to mark retrieve failures as retryable

[Pasha Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@soleen.com>]

On 11-04 15:12, Pratyush Yadav wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 03 2026, David Matlack wrote:
> 
> > From: Pasha Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@soleen.com>
> >
> > When luo_retrieve_file() invokes a handler's .retrieve() callback and it
> > returns an error, LUO currently records the error in
> > luo_file->retrieve_status and blocks any subsequent retrieve attempts.
> > This is necessary when the handler has already partially consumed or
> > freed the preserved KHO state.
> >
> > However, with user arguments passed to .retrieve(), a handler may fail
> > early while validating caller-supplied parameters (such as a missing
> > argument, an invalid or read-only target file descriptor, or a non-empty
> > target file) before touching any preserved KHO state. In such cases,
> > userspace should be able to fix the argument and retry
> > LIVEUPDATE_SESSION_RETRIEVE_FD, and if the file is never retrieved,
> > .finish() must still run to release the preserved KHO state.
> >
> > Add a retryable output flag to struct liveupdate_file_op_args. When a
> > handler sets args->retryable = true on error, luo_retrieve_file() leaves
> > luo_file->retrieve_status at 0 so the retrieve operation can be retried
> > and .finish() will still clean up the unconsumed preserved state if the
> > session is finished without retrieving the file.
> 
> Should we give some sort of signal to userspace whether the error is
> retriable or not? How would it know it can or should try again?

The goal of args->retryable is internal kernel state tracking.

From userspace's perspective, LUO ioctls behave like any other syscall 
where errno is the signal: userspace decides whether and how to retry 
based on the error code (e.g. retrying on -EAGAIN, or picking a 
different mount on -EROFS/-EACCES, or adjusting flags/arguments on 
-EINVAL).