Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751068AbVJJXhx (ORCPT ); Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:37:53 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751053AbVJJXhx (ORCPT ); Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:37:53 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:5248 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751047AbVJJXhw (ORCPT ); Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:37:52 -0400 Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 16:36:48 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Anton Altaparmakov Cc: glommer@br.ibm.com, mikulas@artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, ext2-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, hirofumi@mail.parknet.co.jp, linux-ntfs-dev@lists.sourceforge.net, aia21@cantab.net, hch@infradead.org, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk Subject: Re: [PATCH] Use of getblk differs between locations Message-Id: <20051010163648.3e305b63.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: References: <20051010204517.GA30867@br.ibm.com> <20051010214605.GA11427@br.ibm.com> <20051010223636.GB11427@br.ibm.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 1.0.4 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1122 Lines: 25 Anton Altaparmakov wrote: > > > Maybe the best solution is neither one nor another. Testing and failing > > gracefully seems better. > > > > What do you think? > > I certainly agree with you there. I neither want a deadlock nor > corruption. (-: Yup. In the present implementation __getblk_slow() "cannot fail". It's conceivable that at some future stage we'll change __getblk_slow() so that it returns NULL on an out-of-memory condition. Anyone making such a change would have to audit all callers to make sure that they handle the NULL correctly. It is appropriate at this time to fix the callers so that they correctly handle the NULL return. However, it is non-trivial to actually _test_ such changes, and such changes should be tested. Or at least, they should be done with considerable care and knowledge of the specific filesystems. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/