Re: [PATCH 2/2] debugfs: return error values, not NULL

Sebastian Andrzej Siewior
2019-01-23T21:32:45Z

On 2019-01-23 11:28:14 [+0100], Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> When an error happens, debugfs should return an error pointer value, not
> NULL. This will prevent the totally theoretical error where a debugfs
> call fails due to lack of memory, returning NULL, and that dentry value
> is then passed to another debugfs call, which would end up succeeding,
> creating a file at the root of the debugfs tree, but would then be
> impossible to remove (because you can not remove the directory NULL).
>
> So, to make everyone happy, always return errors, this makes the users
> of debugfs much simpler (they do not have to ever check the return
> value), and everyone can rest easy.

Thank you.

> Reported-by: Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@kernel.org>
> Reported-by: Ulf Hansson <ulf.hansson@linaro.org>
> Reported-by: Gary R Hook <ghook@amd.com>
> Reported-by: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>
> Cc: stable <stable@vger.kernel.org>
> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>

Sebastian