Question about printking

Hi Joe,

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Joe Perches [off-list ref] wrote:

On Sat, 2013-02-02 at 16:30 -0300, Ezequiel Garcia wrote:

quoted

ptr = kmalloc(sizeof(foo));
if (!ptr) {
        pr_err("Cannot allocate memory for foo\n");
        return -ENOMEM;
}
His argue against it was that kmalloc already takes care of reporting/printking
a good deal of interesting information when this happens.

quoted

Can someone expand a bit on this whole idea? (of abuse of printing,
or futility of printing).

k.alloc() takes a GFP_ flag as an arg.

One of those GFP flags is __GFP_NOWARN.

For all failed allocs without GFP_NOWARN
a message is emitted and a dump_stack is
done.

(see: mm/page_alloc.c warn_alloc_failed())

So, most all of these printks after
k.alloc()'s are not necessary.

Thanks for the explanation.

BTW, I see you've made some patches to fix exactly this.
Nice job.

Regards,

-- 
    Ezequiel