Re: [virtio] [PATCH RFC] Clarify FAILED status handling

[Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>]

On 2016-11-30 16:34, Cornelia Huck wrote:
> We did not give any guidance before what the device is supposed to
> do if the driver set the FAILED status bit. Instruct the device to
> leave the driver alone and to ignore any driver actions other than
> reset.
> 
> As we did not specify that before, formulate this as SHOULD so that
> existing implementations stay compliant.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
> ---
> 
> I noticed that we don't really say what the FAILED status bit
> should effect (it's currently basically driver-only, and e.g.
> qemu does not do anything with it). It is probably more useful
> if it actually has consequences for device operation -- although
> we certainly don't want to break existing implementations.

Is there a real use case in sight? The other option is to phase it out
if it is practically without effect so far and we only speculate that it
might be useful.

Jan