riff needs better error messages

[Adrian Bunk]

Much guesswork is involved when trying to figure out the problem when riff reports an error.

As an example, in bug 984647:
15:09:12 - Listening on USB for device connection...
15:09:12 - Connected Device@0
15:09:14 - LCD ERROR: Error while initializing device -1
15:09:14 - COMMAND ERROR: Command execution failed -1
15:09:14 - Disconnected Device@0
15:09:14 - LCD ERROR: Failed to destroy LCD context 10056

The -1 in "LCD ERROR: Error while initializing device -1" comes from InitializeDut::initializeHardware(), which returns -1 in 13 different places.

When supporting users with problems, I want to see what exactly failed and not get the same return value for many different problems.

And for reducing the number of users that need help, riff should print useful error messages that tell what exactly failed (e.g. "Sending TOC+ISSW to device failed").

Note that InitializeDut::initializeHardware() is just an example, and this bug is about the error handling and reporting in riff in general.

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

You can use riff in verbose mode. -v option.

[Adrian Bunk (adrian-bunk-9)]

-v gives in the case of bug 984647 a cryptic additional error message "UNKNOWN token".

In the case of InitializeDut::initializeHardware() there's not even any logging to to distinguish between the first five "return -1" cases.

An error message should describe the problem as clear as possible.

When an error often occurs due to some specific problem, riff should even give the user a hint how to resolve the problem (e.g. "foobar failed - please check at http://igloocommunity.org/support/Riff that you are using the correct configpack").

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

Yes very clear.
This is a feature request. Better error description from riff.
Will be very useful for end user who is trying to flash and finding issue during flash.

[Srimanta Panda (srimanta-panda)]

The fix from RIFF is committed. The code changes for RIFF is available, but still it depends on fix from loader communication GIT. Also it needs new release for riff-configpack and riff-loadercomm debian packages.

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

Any updates on this?
Kalle,
do provide the new riff tool path.
We have dependency of this to debug other flashing issues.
Once you provide the same, we will be able to verify rest of the issues and its cause.

[Kalle Vahlman (kvahlman)]

The fixes are at git along with new packaging. A release will be made once we get a PPA set up for snowball tools.

[Kalle Vahlman (kvahlman)]

Tools PPA up and updated riff uploaded to it