On Fri, Apr 07, 2017 at 12:20:53PM -0700, David Miller wrote: [...] > Let's just discuss the UAPI, since people complain we don't talk > about that enough :-) For those playing at home it is three new > attributes returned in a netlink ACK when the application asks > for the extended response: > > NLMSGERR_ATTR_MSG string Extended error string > NLMSGERR_ATTR_OFFS u32 Byte offset to netlink element causing error > NLMSGERR_ATTR_CODE u32 Subsystem specific error code > NLMSGERR_ATTR_ATTR u16 Netlink attribute triggering error or missing I think it would be good if we get a definition to cap the maximum string length to something reasonable? This can be added in a follow up patch BTW. Thus, we get people coming back to us and request larger strings with a reason why they need more room for this. In general, my main concern with strings is that they can be used in a more freely way than these u32 offsets and error codes, and specifically how inconsistent these string will look like across different netlink subsystems. Anyway, as long as this is optional (not every subsystem if forced to use strings) I'm fine with it :).