Hi, In the process of reviewing the Wine DInput translation layer, I noticed an inconvenience (in the ff-core implementation?) that can possibly lead to confusing problems to application developers (not only for Wine), in short: If a new (id==-1) effect was uploaded (look at ff-core.c::input_ff_upload(...)) that failed (e.g. returning EINVAL), ff-core will have assigned a positive number to the effect id. This can be confusing because the dev->ff->effects[] array will not contain an element at the index of that new effect id. Here is a more elaborated description/discussion: - This is a bug that is either the responsibility of the Linux kernel, or of Wine (and possibly other applications that do the same thing as described below): It is caused by the following situation: When uploading an effect, the specific kernel device driver may return an error, e.g. EINVAL for example when a periodic's effect period is set to zero. This error will then be returned by "ioctl(*(This->fd), EVIOCSFF, &This->effect)". With or without error, one can find out that /drivers/input/ff-core.c:input_ff_upload(...) is called, which will set effect->id >= 0, if it was set to -1 (=> new effect created) by the user. But in case of an error: - Assume effect->id was set to -1 by the user: The error is reported by ff->upload(...) at /drivers/input/ff-core.c:167, the effect->id will also be set >= 0 (*). The offending effect will not be saved in the ff->effects[] array (***). - Assume effect->id was set >= 0 by the user (and ff->effects[effect->id] is a valid existing effect): The error is reported by ff->upload(...) at /drivers/input/ff-core.c:167, the effect->id will remain unchanged (**). The offending effect will not overwrite the ff->effects[effect->id] element (****). Is this (see *, **, *** and ****) desired behaviour? - If yes: Change the following in Wine's dinput/effect_linuxinput.c:90 : if (ioctl(*(This->fd), EVIOCSFF, &This->effect) == -1) { to : int effectId_old = This->effect.id; if (ioctl(*(This->fd), EVIOCSFF, &This->effect) == -1) { This->effect.id = effectId_old; - If no for *: Kernel code /drivers/input/ff-core.c:input_ff_upload(...) has to be patched to revert "effect->id" back to its original value set by the user, which is only needed when the initial (by user) value of "effect->id" was equal to -1. - If no for **** (or maybe also ***): ff->effects[effect->id] could be replaced by an 'empty' effect (however this can get complex because the effect's type has to remain unchanged) This would be a change in the kernel code /drivers/input/ff-core.c:input_ff_upload(...). - If no for **: I don't really know. Discussion is needed. - In my opinion, **, *** and **** are desired behaviour, while * should leave the effect->id at -1. In that case, Wine's dinput implementation does not have to be patched, and the kernel code only should apply a minor patch. Best regards, Elias -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-input" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html