Pete> I really hate to disagree with the chief penguin here, but it's
Pete> extremely dumb to return errors from close(). The last time we
Pete> trashed this issue on this list was when a newbie used an error
Pete> return from release() to communicate with his driver.
Pete> The problem with errors from close() is that NOTHING SMART can be
Pete> done by the application when it receives it. And application can:
Pete> a) print a message "Your data are lost, have a nice day\n".
Pete> b) loop retrying close() until it works.
Pete> c) do (a) then (b).
I must disagree with you. We run the Andrew File System (AFS), which
has client-side caching with write-on-close semantics. If an error
occurs goes wrong at close() time, a well-written application can
actually do something useful - such as sending an alert, or letting
the user know the action failed.
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