Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 21:19:38 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> To: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.org Subject: Procedure for introducing new errno values? Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1000502211509.19996O-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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After some chat with various consumers of the extended attribute code, as
well as interested parties in the Linux realm who are looking at providing
a similar service over the Linux kernel, we've concluded that the current
errno message range doesn't contain a value appropriate for ``Extended
attribute not defined'' -- similar possibilities, such as ENOENT or
ENODEV, do not uniquely describe the error condition and can be confusing.
For example, ``File not found'' following a ``getextattr md5 /kernel''
suggests that /kernel was not found, not that the md5 attribute was not
found.
What is the correct procedure for adding new errno values? Presumably
errno.8, src/sys/errno.h, as well as presumably some other files (perhaps
in libc) for defining the string version, et al? I've also noticed that
there is an errno.h in both /usr/include and /usr/include/sys.
I am proposing EEXTATTR ("Extended attribute not defined"), which would be
returned when a consumer of the VOP_GETEXTATTR() call attempted to
retrieve an undefined attribute name.
Robert N M Watson
robert@fledge.watson.org http://www.watson.org/~robert/
PGP key fingerprint: AF B5 5F FF A6 4A 79 37 ED 5F 55 E9 58 04 6A B1
TIS Labs at Network Associates, Safeport Network Services
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