Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/hid

[cascardo/linux.git] / Documentation / DMA-attributes.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/DMA-attributes.txt b/Documentation/DMA-attributes.txt
index 2d455a5..98bf7ac 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/DMA-attributes.txt
+++ b/Documentation/DMA-attributes.txt
@@ -126,3 +126,20 @@ means that we won't try quite as hard to get them.
 
 NOTE: At the moment DMA_ATTR_ALLOC_SINGLE_PAGES is only implemented on ARM,
 though ARM64 patches will likely be posted soon.
+
+DMA_ATTR_NO_WARN
+----------------
+
+This tells the DMA-mapping subsystem to suppress allocation failure reports
+(similarly to __GFP_NOWARN).
+
+On some architectures allocation failures are reported with error messages
+to the system logs.  Although this can help to identify and debug problems,
+drivers which handle failures (eg, retry later) have no problems with them,
+and can actually flood the system logs with error messages that aren't any
+problem at all, depending on the implementation of the retry mechanism.
+
+So, this provides a way for drivers to avoid those error messages on calls
+where allocation failures are not a problem, and shouldn't bother the logs.
+
+NOTE: At the moment DMA_ATTR_NO_WARN is only implemented on PowerPC.