From: Jakub Kicinski Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:21:49 +0000 (-0700) Subject: docs: networking: add guidance on what to push via extack X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=96fbe161e4020677ab39bd194627f9515b685a06;p=thirdparty%2Flinux.git docs: networking: add guidance on what to push via extack Every now and then someone tries to duplicated extack messages to dmesg. Document our guidance against this. Also indicate that system level faults should continue to go to system logs. The high level thinking is to try to distinguish between what's important to the user vs system admin. Reviewed-by: Joe Damato Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260611172149.1877704-1-kuba@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski --- diff --git a/Documentation/networking/driver.rst b/Documentation/networking/driver.rst index 195a916dc0de..920c0ec98759 100644 --- a/Documentation/networking/driver.rst +++ b/Documentation/networking/driver.rst @@ -128,3 +128,16 @@ to be freed up. If you return NETDEV_TX_BUSY from the ndo_start_xmit method, you must not keep any reference to that SKB and you must not attempt to free it up. + +Error message reporting +======================= + +A number of driver configuration interfaces pass a Netlink extended ACK +(``extack``) object to the driver (either directly as an argument or +as a member of a parameter struct). The drivers should try to report +most errors via the ``extack`` object. System level exceptions, +indicating that system or device is misbehaving or is in bad state, +should continue to be reported to system logs. + +Messages should be passed **either** via ``extack`` **or** to system logs. +Drivers should not try to report the same information to both.