Error handling broken for block devices

Wolfgang Denk
2020-01-20T16:40:56Z

Hi,

I noticed that block device commands like "ls" fail to give any error
messages in some cases. For example, something like

-> ls FOOBAR 1:1 /
->

will terminate without the slightest hint that FOOBAR is some device
type it does not know.

Following the call chain I see this:

"ls" command -> do_ls (...) -> fs_set_blk_dev(...) -> blk_get_device_part_str()

"disk/part.c":

431 int blk_get_device_part_str(const char *ifname, const char *dev_part_str,
432 struct blk_desc **dev_desc,
433 disk_partition_t *info, int allow_whole_dev)
...
450 if (0 == strcmp(ifname, "hostfs")) {
...
466 }
...
474 if (0 == strcmp(ifname, "ubi")) {
...
488 }
513 /* Look up the device */
514 dev = blk_get_device_by_str(ifname, dev_str, dev_desc);
515 if (dev < 0)
516 goto cleanup;

No error messages get printed here, but I think these are mandatory
in such a case.

Stephen, this code was added as part of your commit:

commit 10a37fd7a40826c43a63591855346adf1a1ac02d
Author: Stephen Warren <swarren@nvidia.com>
Date: Fri Sep 21 09:50:57 2012 +0000

disk: get_device_and_partition() "auto" partition and cleanup

Can you think of any strong reason _not_ to issue a proper error
message here?

[From the user perspective it would also be nice to have a way to
find out which device types are actually supported in a given U-Boot
binary. Or is there such a tool?]

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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