Re: [PATCH] eventpoll: return -ENOIOCTLCMD for unknown ioctl commands

From: Joe Damato

Date: Thu Oct 01 2026 - 16:10:16 EST


On Wed, Sep 30, 2026 at 05:50:58AM -0400, Hengyu Liang wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 25, 2026 at 5:59 AM Joe Damato <joe@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 24, 2026 at 02:57:47PM -0400, hengyul@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > > default:
> > > - ret = -EINVAL;
> > > + ret = -ENOIOCTLCMD;
> > > break;
> > > }
> >
> > I think based on the documentation this is probably right, but I am now
> > wondering why both ep_eventpoll_ioctl and ep_eventpoll_bp_ioctl need to
> > exist.
> >
> > Maybe when I first implemented this I thought it made sense to factor
> > out the busy poll ioctls into their own function, but in retrospect maybe
> > it's cleaner to just collapse the ioctl function into a single one
> > instead of having two layers?
> >
> > In other words, maybe:
> > - delete ep_eventpoll_ioctl
> > - add the is_file_epoll check to ep_eventpoll_bp_ioctl
> > - rename ep_eventpoll_bp_ioctl to ep_eventpoll_ioctl
> > - fix the test (as you did in this version of the patch)
> >
> > Would result in a cleaner fewer helpers / cleaner code ?
>
> Thanks for taking a look. Agreed, a single handler would be cleaner.
> Two things I noticed while looking into it:
>
> 1. With CONFIG_NET_RX_BUSY_POLL=n, ep_eventpoll_bp_ioctl() is the stub
> that returns -EOPNOTSUPP for every command. If it became the
> .unlocked_ioctl handler as is, every ioctl on an epoll fd would fail
> with EOPNOTSUPP on those kernels, which is the same problem in a
> different config. So the stub would need to keep a small switch:
>
> static long ep_eventpoll_ioctl(struct file *file, unsigned int cmd,
> unsigned long arg)
> {
> switch (cmd) {
> case EPIOCSPARAMS:
> case EPIOCGPARAMS:
> return -EOPNOTSUPP;
> default:
> return -ENOIOCTLCMD;
> }
> }

Yea, I see. I read it more closely this time. I suspect when I wrote this
originally, I had factored the code this way that way the stub could take care
of the CONFIG_NET_RX_BUSY_POLL=n case. So, now I'm not sure it make sense to
fold them into a single handler becauase we'd end up duplicating the switch
logic in two places for each CONFIG_NET_RX_BUSY_POLL setting.

So, in retrospect, I think probably the original patch you proposed might be
the best option. Sorry if I misread it the first time.