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Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 15:21:33 -0700
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, greg@kroah.com, jblunck@suse.de
Subject: Re: [PATCH] driver-core: devtmpfs - driver core maintained /dev
 tmpfs
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On Fri, 1 May 2009 23:59:32 +0200
Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org> wrote:

> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 21:26, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, 1 May 2009 13:16:22 +0200
> > Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 07:29, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> > dev->type->nodename() might have failed due to -ENOMEM, in which case
> >> > it seems wrong to assume that it returned NULL for <whatever reason you
> >> > thought it might want to return NULL>.
> >> >
> >> > It's all a bit confused.
> >>
> >> This logic is only for providing a custom name hint. Only a few
> >> devices need that at all. If the allocation fails, the default name
> >> will be used, not the custom name.
> >
> > But that's bad, isn't it? __It means that the kernel will come up with
> > one name if the memory allocation succeeded, and a different name if
> > the allocation failed.
> 
> Yeah, sure, it's bad. But I think we have pretty much lost anyway, if
> we run into oom at this stage.
> 
> What should we do instead? If we, for some reason, can not get a
> possible custom name?

Not much - just sayin'.

Presumably the page allocator will have given a big spew, so the
operator knows what went wrong.