Re: [RFC] mm/gup.c: Updated return value of {get|pin}_user_pages_fast()

[Jan Kara]

On Wed 06-05-20 02:06:56, Souptick Joarder wrote:
> On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 1:08 AM John Hubbard <jhubbard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On 2020-05-05 12:14, Souptick Joarder wrote:
> > > Currently {get|pin}_user_pages_fast() have 3 return value 0, -errno
> > > and no of pinned pages. The only case where these two functions will
> > > return 0, is for nr_pages <= 0, which doesn't find a valid use case.
> > > But if at all any, then a -ERRNO will be returned instead of 0, which
> > > means {get|pin}_user_pages_fast() will have 2 return values -errno &
> > > no of pinned pages.
> > >
> > > Update all the callers which deals with return value 0 accordingly.
> >
> > Hmmm, seems a little shaky. In order to do this safely, I'd recommend
> > first changing gup_fast/pup_fast so so that they return -EINVAL if
> > the caller specified nr_pages==0, and of course auditing all callers,
> > to ensure that this won't cause problems.
> 
> While auditing it was figured out, there are 5 callers which cares for
> return value
> 0 of gup_fast/pup_fast. What problem it might cause if we change
> gup_fast/pup_fast
> to return -EINVAL and update all the callers in a single commit ?

Well, first I'd ask a different question: Why do you want to change the
current behavior? It's not like the current behavior is confusing.  Callers
that pass >0 pages can happily rely on the simple behavior of < 0 return on
error or > 0 return if we mapped some pages. Callers that can possibly ask
to map 0 pages can get 0 pages back - kind of expected - and I don't see
any benefit in trying to rewrite these callers to handle -EINVAL instead...

								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx>
SUSE Labs, CR