fault-codes 5.0 KB

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122123124125126127128
  1. This is a summary of the most important conventions for use of fault
  2. codes in the I2C/SMBus stack.
  3. A "Fault" is not always an "Error"
  4. ----------------------------------
  5. Not all fault reports imply errors; "page faults" should be a familiar
  6. example. Software often retries idempotent operations after transient
  7. faults. There may be fancier recovery schemes that are appropriate in
  8. some cases, such as re-initializing (and maybe resetting). After such
  9. recovery, triggered by a fault report, there is no error.
  10. In a similar way, sometimes a "fault" code just reports one defined
  11. result for an operation ... it doesn't indicate that anything is wrong
  12. at all, just that the outcome wasn't on the "golden path".
  13. In short, your I2C driver code may need to know these codes in order
  14. to respond correctly. Other code may need to rely on YOUR code reporting
  15. the right fault code, so that it can (in turn) behave correctly.
  16. I2C and SMBus fault codes
  17. -------------------------
  18. These are returned as negative numbers from most calls, with zero or
  19. some positive number indicating a non-fault return. The specific
  20. numbers associated with these symbols differ between architectures,
  21. though most Linux systems use <asm-generic/errno*.h> numbering.
  22. Note that the descriptions here are not exhaustive. There are other
  23. codes that may be returned, and other cases where these codes should
  24. be returned. However, drivers should not return other codes for these
  25. cases (unless the hardware doesn't provide unique fault reports).
  26. Also, codes returned by adapter probe methods follow rules which are
  27. specific to their host bus (such as PCI, or the platform bus).
  28. EAGAIN
  29. Returned by I2C adapters when they lose arbitration in master
  30. transmit mode: some other master was transmitting different
  31. data at the same time.
  32. Also returned when trying to invoke an I2C operation in an
  33. atomic context, when some task is already using that I2C bus
  34. to execute some other operation.
  35. EBADMSG
  36. Returned by SMBus logic when an invalid Packet Error Code byte
  37. is received. This code is a CRC covering all bytes in the
  38. transaction, and is sent before the terminating STOP. This
  39. fault is only reported on read transactions; the SMBus slave
  40. may have a way to report PEC mismatches on writes from the
  41. host. Note that even if PECs are in use, you should not rely
  42. on these as the only way to detect incorrect data transfers.
  43. EBUSY
  44. Returned by SMBus adapters when the bus was busy for longer
  45. than allowed. This usually indicates some device (maybe the
  46. SMBus adapter) needs some fault recovery (such as resetting),
  47. or that the reset was attempted but failed.
  48. EINVAL
  49. This rather vague error means an invalid parameter has been
  50. detected before any I/O operation was started. Use a more
  51. specific fault code when you can.
  52. One example would be a driver trying an SMBus Block Write
  53. with block size outside the range of 1-32 bytes.
  54. EIO
  55. This rather vague error means something went wrong when
  56. performing an I/O operation. Use a more specific fault
  57. code when you can.
  58. ENODEV
  59. Returned by driver probe() methods. This is a bit more
  60. specific than ENXIO, implying the problem isn't with the
  61. address, but with the device found there. Driver probes
  62. may verify the device returns *correct* responses, and
  63. return this as appropriate. (The driver core will warn
  64. about probe faults other than ENXIO and ENODEV.)
  65. ENOMEM
  66. Returned by any component that can't allocate memory when
  67. it needs to do so.
  68. ENXIO
  69. Returned by I2C adapters to indicate that the address phase
  70. of a transfer didn't get an ACK. While it might just mean
  71. an I2C device was temporarily not responding, usually it
  72. means there's nothing listening at that address.
  73. Returned by driver probe() methods to indicate that they
  74. found no device to bind to. (ENODEV may also be used.)
  75. EOPNOTSUPP
  76. Returned by an adapter when asked to perform an operation
  77. that it doesn't, or can't, support.
  78. For example, this would be returned when an adapter that
  79. doesn't support SMBus block transfers is asked to execute
  80. one. In that case, the driver making that request should
  81. have verified that functionality was supported before it
  82. made that block transfer request.
  83. Similarly, if an I2C adapter can't execute all legal I2C
  84. messages, it should return this when asked to perform a
  85. transaction it can't. (These limitations can't be seen in
  86. the adapter's functionality mask, since the assumption is
  87. that if an adapter supports I2C it supports all of I2C.)
  88. EPROTO
  89. Returned when slave does not conform to the relevant I2C
  90. or SMBus (or chip-specific) protocol specifications. One
  91. case is when the length of an SMBus block data response
  92. (from the SMBus slave) is outside the range 1-32 bytes.
  93. ETIMEDOUT
  94. This is returned by drivers when an operation took too much
  95. time, and was aborted before it completed.
  96. SMBus adapters may return it when an operation took more
  97. time than allowed by the SMBus specification; for example,
  98. when a slave stretches clocks too far. I2C has no such
  99. timeouts, but it's normal for I2C adapters to impose some
  100. arbitrary limits (much longer than SMBus!) too.