[BIKESHED] Giving abort(2) a reason

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Sun Sep 12 14:13:59 PDT 2004


In message <20040912.142552.83283958.imp at bsdimp.com>, "M. Warner Losh" writes:

>: Given that we are usually pretty stumped when we get to call abort(2)
>: it needs to work without malloc or anything like it and varargs into
>: the kernel is not at all in my future.
>
>Only in malloc.  Everywhere else, people have enough state to cope.
>Do we really want to have another kernel API just to support malloc
>failures?

Well, the problem is that practically nothing else works once malloc
fails, and people seem to find the lack of visible explanation a
problem.

syslog() or anything else using varargs is not going to work...

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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