Re: [PATCH] Watchdog: sp5100_tco: Lower verbosity of disabled watchdog hardware

[Guenter Roeck]

On 5/9/22 16:10, Limonciello, Mario wrote:
> [Public]
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Guenter Roeck <groeck7@xxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Guenter Roeck
> > Sent: Monday, May 9, 2022 17:56
> > To: Limonciello, Mario <Mario.Limonciello@xxxxxxx>; Wim Van Sebroeck
> > <wim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; open list:WATCHDOG DEVICE DRIVERS <linux-
> > watchdog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; open list <linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: ionut_n2001@xxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: [PATCH] Watchdog: sp5100_tco: Lower verbosity of disabled
> > watchdog hardware
> >
> > On 5/9/22 09:33, Mario Limonciello wrote:
> > > If watchdog hardware has been disabled, currently the kernel driver
> > > will show at err level during probe:
> > >
> > > "Watchdog hardware is disabled"
> > >
> > > This is unnecessarily verbose as there is already a -ENODEV returned.
> > > Lower the level to debug.
> >
> > Is it ? Without this message, a user may try to load the driver,
> > get an error message, and have no idea why the driver was not
> > enabled even though the hardware exists. If anything , -ENODEV
> > is less than perfect. Unfortunately there does not seem to be
> > a better error code, or at least I don't see one.
>
> If it didn't have modaliases and users only manually loaded it; I would agree
> with you.  However it has MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE, so if that PCI device is around
> then the driver will load either way.  That would translate into an "error message"
> on every boot if you have this module compiled and didn't manually try to load it.

Why don't you just blacklist the driver ?

Guenter