Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753802AbYHRKkM (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:40:12 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751504AbYHRKj7 (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:39:59 -0400 Received: from styx.suse.cz ([82.119.242.94]:45616 "EHLO mail.suse.cz" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751483AbYHRKj6 (ORCPT ); Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:39:58 -0400 Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:39:56 +0200 From: Jan Kara To: Pavel Machek Cc: Tim Hockin , Jan Blunck , Greg KH , Joe Perches , schwidefsky@de.ibm.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-s390@vger.kernel.org, lf_kernel_messages@lists.linux-foundation.org, Andrew Morton , Michael Holzheu , Gerrit Huizenga , Randy Dunlap , Jan Kara , Sam Ravnborg , Jochen =?iso-8859-1?B?Vm/f?= , Kunai Takashi , Tim Bird Subject: Re: [patch 1/3] kmsg: Kernel message catalog macros. Message-ID: <20080818103956.GB11378@duck.suse.cz> References: <20080730171156.824640459@de.ibm.com> <1218733457.2651.11.camel@localhost> <1218769739.24527.76.camel@localhost> <20080815034419.GB803@suse.de> <20080815112117.GP10078@bolzano.suse.de> <20080818092317.GD6635@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080818092317.GD6635@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1844 Lines: 41 On Mon 18-08-08 11:23:20, Pavel Machek wrote: > Hi! > > > > I don't think that he wants to unify all the printk's in the system. I don't > > > think that reporting all errors "in the same way as an ATA error" makes any > > > sense. That would just lead to very stupid and unnatural messages for all > > > errors that are not like "ATA errors". Annotation of existing errors is a much > > > more flexible and feasible solution to that problem. > > > > Please don't misinterpret. I don't want to make other errors parse > > like an ATA error, I want to make the plumbing be parallel. I want > > one umbrella mechanism for reporting things that are more important > > than just-another-printk(). > > > > Because frankly, "parse dmesg" is a pretty crappy way to have to > > monitor your system for failures, and I am tired of explaining to > > people why we still do that. > > "parse dmesg" does not work for monitoring your system for failures; > dmesg buffer can overflow. > > If something fails, you should get errno returned for userspace, and > that's where you should be doing the monitoring. Yes, but there are far to few errno's to identify the problem. Imagine how many different causes can result in EIO. Or have you ever tried to find out why the crappy filesystem doesn't want to mount without looking into kernel messages - the returned errno is always the same :). So I don't think errno is a solution... > So... what parts don't return enough information to userspace so that > you need to parse dmesg? Lets fix them. Honza -- Jan Kara SUSE Labs, CR -- 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/