Extended error reporting to user space?

From: Nikita V. Youshchenko
Date: Tue Feb 16 2010 - 07:20:37 EST


Hi

I'm developing a device driver that, in it's ioctl()s, accepts a complex
data structure. Before doing it's operation, it performs large number of
checks if data is valid. If one of those checks fail, driver
returns -EINVAL.

Unfortunately this -EINVAL is not really useful. E.g. if a developer,
sitting in his IDE and debugging his code, will see ioctl()
returning -EINVAL, and will have hard times finding what exactly is wrong.

Before inventing driver-specific extended error reporting, I'd like to ask
if there is anything more or less generic for this.
I believe situation when -Exxx is too weak interface for error reporting is
common.

Nikita
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