[PATCH net-next v2] docs: networking: add guidance on what to push via extack

[PATCH net-next v2] docs: networking: add guidance on what to push via extack

[Jakub Kicinski]

Every now and then someone tries to duplicated extack
messages to dmesg. Document our guidance against this.
Also indicate that system level faults should continue
to go to system logs. The high level thinking is to try
to distinguish between what's important to the user vs
system admin.

Reviewed-by: Joe Damato <joe@dama.to>
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
---
v2: some nit picks

CC: corbet@lwn.net
CC: skhan@linuxfoundation.org
CC: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
---
 Documentation/networking/driver.rst | 13 +++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/networking/driver.rst b/Documentation/networking/driver.rst
index 195a916dc0de..920c0ec98759 100644
--- a/Documentation/networking/driver.rst
+++ b/Documentation/networking/driver.rst
@@ -128,3 +128,16 @@ to be freed up.
 If you return NETDEV_TX_BUSY from the ndo_start_xmit method, you
 must not keep any reference to that SKB and you must not attempt
 to free it up.
+
+Error message reporting
+=======================
+
+A number of driver configuration interfaces pass a Netlink extended ACK
+(``extack``) object to the driver (either directly as an argument or
+as a member of a parameter struct). The drivers should try to report
+most errors via the ``extack`` object. System level exceptions,
+indicating that system or device is misbehaving or is in bad state,
+should continue to be reported to system logs.
+
+Messages should be passed **either** via ``extack`` **or** to system logs.
+Drivers should not try to report the same information to both.
-- 
2.54.0

Re: [PATCH net-next v2] docs: networking: add guidance on what to push via extack

[patchwork-bot+netdevbpf]

Hello:

This patch was applied to netdev/net-next.git (main)
by Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>:

On Thu, 11 Jun 2026 10:21:49 -0700 you wrote:
> Every now and then someone tries to duplicated extack
> messages to dmesg. Document our guidance against this.
> Also indicate that system level faults should continue
> to go to system logs. The high level thinking is to try
> to distinguish between what's important to the user vs
> system admin.
> 
> [...]

Here is the summary with links:
  - [net-next,v2] docs: networking: add guidance on what to push via extack
    https://git.kernel.org/netdev/net-next/c/96fbe161e402

You are awesome, thank you!
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