Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] vfio/mdev: add version attribute for mdev device

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Cornelia Huck (cohuck@xxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> On Tue, 7 May 2019 15:18:26 -0600
> Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun,  5 May 2019 21:49:04 -0400
> > Yan Zhao <yan.y.zhao@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > > +  Errno:
> > > +  If vendor driver wants to claim a mdev device incompatible to all other mdev
> > > +  devices, it should not register version attribute for this mdev device. But if
> > > +  a vendor driver has already registered version attribute and it wants to claim
> > > +  a mdev device incompatible to all other mdev devices, it needs to return
> > > +  -ENODEV on access to this mdev device's version attribute.
> > > +  If a mdev device is only incompatible to certain mdev devices, write of
> > > +  incompatible mdev devices's version strings to its version attribute should
> > > +  return -EINVAL;  
> > 
> > I think it's best not to define the specific errno returned for a
> > specific situation, let the vendor driver decide, userspace simply
> > needs to know that an errno on read indicates the device does not
> > support migration version comparison and that an errno on write
> > indicates the devices are incompatible or the target doesn't support
> > migration versions.
> 
> I think I have to disagree here: It's probably valuable to have an
> agreed error for 'cannot migrate at all' vs 'cannot migrate between
> those two particular devices'. Userspace might want to do different
> things (e.g. trying with different device pairs).

Trying to stuff these things down an errno seems a bad idea; we can't
get much information that way.

Dave

--
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / dgilbert@xxxxxxxxxx / Manchester, UK