Re: [MirageOS-devel] load/startup time error handling

[Thomas Leonard <talex5@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 1 October 2016 at 15:28, Richard Mortier
<richard.mortier@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 30 September 2016 at 17:13, Hannes Mehnert <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Hey,
>>
>> There has been lots of threads about error reporting (both on this list
>> and in several issues).  I want to focus in here only on _load time
>> errors_ - which happen during startup (exactly when `connect` is
>> called).  Please leave run time error handling out of this thread.
>>
>> So far, connect returns [ `Ok of 'a | `Error of 'b ] Lwt.t, and in the
>> error case functoria emits a "fail (Failure <devicename>)".  This is
>> clearly not very informative to potential users (an example being
>> "Failure net11").
>>
>> I've iterated over the potential solutions with Mindy some days ago, and
>> wanted to ask the broader developer community: is there any non-fatal
>> initialisation error you can think of?  I cannot think of any (and
>> couldn't find any in various libraries I looked into).  I also cannot
>> think of actions you'd like to do when a failure occurs during startup
>> (apart from fixing the code, recompiling, and restarting).
>>
>> Because, if not, we can simplify this rather radically by having connect
>> return an 'a Lwt.t, and in case of an error (such as "permission denied"
>> in mirage-net-unix) fail and never transit into running state of the
>> unikernel.
>>
>> This would also, as a side effect, simplify run time errors since the
>> type error would not need to be convoluted with the potential startup
>> errors as it is the case now.
>>
>> If nobody disagrees (and comes up with non-contrived examples), I'm
>> happy to massage code into this direction within the next few days.
>
> Sounds good to me too!
>
> Only thing that comes to mind is to clarify: in cases where one writes
> a unikernel that can use (eg) one of two devices, is there a way to
> determine which of the devices is actually available at boot, without
> triggering an error?
>
> (I'm thinking of the case of something like a router that supports N
> ports where N isn't known until runtime.)

In that case I think you'd request a switch device in your config.ml.
The switch would always be created successfully, but would handle
errors connecting clients separately.

> Having said that, if this isn't supported at present anyway, then it
> sounds like something that might need a device interface update in
> future and so shouldn't stall your suggestion.
>
> (Or maybe the model is that you late bind N by rebuilding the
> unikernel once you do know what N is?)


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