Re: [PATCH/RFC] I/O-check interface for driver's error handling

[Linas Vepstas <linas@austin.ibm.com>]

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 03:13:05PM +0900, Hidetoshi Seto was heard to remark:

[ .. iochk_clear() and iochk_read() ...]

> And then, I don't think it need to have "pci" ... limitation of this
> API's target. It would not be match if there are a recoverable device
> over some PCI to XXX bridge, or if there are some special arch where
> don't have PCI but other recoverable bus system, or if future bus system
> doesn't called pci...
> Currently we would deal only pci, but in future possibly not.

OK, in that case, I like the names you picked.

> > Yes, they should be no-ops. save/restore interrupts would be a bad idea.
> 
> I expect that we should not do any operation requires enabled interrupt
> between iochk_clear and iochk_read. 

why? Maybe some specific pci chipset might need this, but in general,
I don't see why this should be assumed.  

> If their defaults are no-ops, device
> maintainers who develops their driver on not-implemented arch should be
> more careful. 

Why? People who write device drivers already know if/when they need to
disable interrupts, and so they already disable if they need it.  

If a specific arch is using a specific pci chipset that needs interrupts 
disabled in order to get io error info, then the arch-specific 
implementation can disable interrupts in iock_clear() ... But I can't 
imagine why one would want to make this the default behaviour for 
all arches that *don't* support io error checking ... 

(on ppc64, iochk_clear() would be a no-op, and iochk_read() would
check a flag and maybe call firmware, but would not otherwise have to
fiddle with interrupts).

--linas

p.s. I would like to have iochk_read() take struct pci_dev * as an
argument.  (I could store a pointer to pci_dev in the "cookie" but
that seems odd).