Re: May close() return any error code?

Dmitry Torokhov
2015-07-29T14:45:20Z

HI Takashi,

On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 12:46:59PM +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> Hi,
>
> while debugging a problem of X and gdm with the old systemd-210, we
> encountered a sudden death of systemd-logind, and this turned out to
> be an unexpected errno from close(). The close() call for input
> devices returns ENODEV error. The logind in systemd-210 treats this
> error code as fatal, triggers assert() and eventually kills itself.
> The details are found in an openSUSE bugzilla thread:
> https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939571
>
> This seems coming from evdev_flush(). As there is no fd leak, it's no
> big problem per se. But, now the question is whether returning such
> an error code is correct behavior at all. At least, it doesn't seem
> defined in POSIX:
> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/close.html

Hmm, if I checked the right version of the code close_nointr_nofail()
expects only 0 as the return code so even if we change the kernel to
use more conforming -EIO instead of -ENODEV systemd will still die...

The question is whether we really need to propagate return value from
f_op->flush() up to userspace in filp_close(). Why don't we ask Al?

Thanks.

--
Dmitry