RE: [PATCH] tty: Fix tcdrain hang due to tty chars_in_buffer errors

[Harris, Jeff]

That was my other thought, but there are other kernel drivers which do
report errors from chars_in_buffer.  A grep of the code shows
ipw_chars_in_buffer in drivers/char/pcmcia/ipwireless/tty.c,
hvc_chars_in_buffer in hvc_console.c, ntty_chars_in_buffer in nozomi.c,
if_chars_in_buffer in isdn/gigaset/interface.c, etc.  Do they all need
to be updated?  

Should the return type be unsigned int to make the behavior more
explicit?  The signed type may be interpreted along the lines of a read
or write call which returns a count or a negative value to indicate a
failure.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Cox [mailto:alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 12:01 PM
To: Harris, Jeff
Cc: alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; vapier@xxxxxxxxxx; adobriyan@xxxxxxxxx;
linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Harris, Jeff
Subject: Re: [PATCH] tty: Fix tcdrain hang due to tty chars_in_buffer
errors

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:07:54 -0400
Jeff Harris <jeff_harris@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> If a tty driver's chars_in_buffer callback reports an error, the wait
loop in

chars_in_buffer cannot report an error. It reports how many characters
are in the buffer.

> A process calling tcdrain will block indefinitely if it calls tcdrain
when the
> device is disconnected.

Fix your chars_in_buffer. On a disconnect its quite reasonable to return
0, as they are not buffered any more.

Alan

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