Re: [PATCH] powerpc/nvram: Replace kmalloc with kzalloc in the error message

Markus Elfring
2020-06-02T05:02:02Z

>>> Please just remove the message instead, it's a tiny allocation that's
>>> unlikely to ever fail, and the caller will print an error anyway.
>>
>> How do you think about to take another look at a previous update suggestion
>> like the following?
>>
>> powerpc/nvram: Delete three error messages for a failed memory allocation
>> https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/linuxppc-dev/patch/00845261-8528-d011-d3b8-e9355a231d3a@users.sourceforge.net/
>> https://lore.kernel.org/linuxppc-dev/00845261-8528-d011-d3b8-e9355a231d3a@users.sourceforge.net/
>> https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/752720/
>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/1/19/537
>
> That deleted the messages from nvram_scan_partitions(), but neither of
> the callers of nvram_scan_paritions() check its return value or print
> anything if it fails. So removing those messages would make those
> failures silent which is not what we want.

* How do you think about information like the following?
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst?id=f359287765c04711ff54fbd11645271d8e5ff763#n883
“…
These generic allocation functions all emit a stack dump on failure when used
without __GFP_NOWARN so there is no use in emitting an additional failure
message when NULL is returned.
…”

* Would you like to clarify software development concerns around
the Linux allocation failure report any more?

Regards,
Markus