Subject: Re: bug#20501: Include EINVAL in mkdir(2) man page

From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 May 2015 09:44:39 -0600

tag 20501 notabug
thanks

On 05/04/2015 08:31 AM, Raghavendra Prabhu wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It is possible for mkdir(2) to return EINVAL in certain circumstances.
> However, the man page mkdir(2) doesn't mention that.

Unfortunately, the mkdir(2) man page is owned by the kernel man pages
project, not by coreutils.  We can do nothing about it here.  As such,
I'm closing this bug report from the coreutils bug database, although
you should still feel free to comment here as desired.

> 
> I am hitting it on overlayfs. Other instances reported:
> 
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10015377/mkdir-pathname-with-symbol
> http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-bugs/2009-05/msg01771.html
> 
> So, it needs to be documented in man page for mkdir(2).

In general, POSIX allows any interface to return additional errors other
than what is strictly documented, as long as those additional errors
make sense and as long as a documented error is not missed.  So
well-written code should never assume that only documented errors can be
returned.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org