>I was reading through the lm87 code and noted (unless I am missing >something...highly possible) that an error return code from the I2C layer >seems to be ignored. First off, am I reading this right, and secondly >is this on purpose (i.e. is there some reason that this is the right thing >to do that I am not getting)? Please review the 50 other chip drivers. If you can find one which *does* handle i2c-layer errors properly, let me know ;) [1] More seriously, no, you're not missing anything. All our drivers are shamelessly ignoring errors. This has been reported many times, see for example these tickets: http://www2.lm-sensors.nu/~lm78/readticket.cgi?ticket=517 http://www2.lm-sensors.nu/~lm78/readticket.cgi?ticket=855 And there's probably more in both the ticket base and the mailing-list archive. The (bad) reason behind this is that most likely, if there are read errors, the driver will be unusable anyway. [1] The only driver handling the errors correctly as far as I know is the w83l785ts. I implemented it because there is a popular Asus board using this chip and Asus' C.O.P. "feature" interacts with the chip repeatedly, causing frequent (as in a few percents) read errors. Detecting such errors and retrying reading fixes the problem in most cases. A similar method could be implemented in other chips, but when people complain, we usually spend time trying to fix their bus (either driver or hardware) instead, since that's what is really needed. At any rate, I would not work on this in 2.4 anymore, but more likely in 2.6, where having more "serious" drivers would be welcome. Thanks, Jean Delvare
