Re: question about pci_enable_msix_range

[Julia Lawall]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2016, Alex Williamson wrote:

> On Tue, 15 Mar 2016 11:26:50 +0100 (CET)
> Julia Lawall <julia.lawall@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I was looking at the following code in the file
> > drivers/vfio/pci/vfio_pci_intrs.c:
> >
> >                 ret = pci_enable_msix_range(pdev, vdev->msix, 1, nvec);
> >                 if (ret < nvec) {
> >                         if (ret > 0)
> >                                 pci_disable_msix(pdev);
> >                         kfree(vdev->msix);
> >                         kfree(vdev->ctx);
> >                         return ret;
> >                 }
> >
> > I was wondering what is the point of using a range of 1 .. nvec if there
> > is going to be a failure if the number of allocated irqs is less than
> > nvec?
>
> Hi Julia,
>
> The intention is that on failure we can indicate to the user a value
> that might work.  If we were to call with {nvec, nvec} we'd only get
> back -ENOSPC and the user could only arbitrarily decrease the request
> by some amount and try again.  By using {1, nvec} we can hopefully
> provide a useful next step.  On the other hand, we haven't enabled the
> number of vectors the user requested, so it doesn't seem to make sense
> to leave any enabled.  Thanks,

Ah, OK I see now that the ret will be the value that works in this case,
not a normal failure value.  Thanks for the feedback, which has made
things a lot clearer.

julia