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KERN_FAILURE
KERN_FAILURE is XNU's explicit catch-all kern_return_t value. It establishes that the requested Mach operation did not complete, but it does not say whether the reason was a port-right problem, a memory condition, a policy decision, or a service-specific failure.
Its diagnostic value is therefore in the boundary where it appears. Preserve any earlier status emitted by a lower layer, the exact API call, and whether the failure occurred while validating input, queuing work, or completing it. Retrying blindly can be wrong: some Mach operations change object state or transfer rights, and only the individual API contract can say whether a retry is safe.
How to keep the failure actionable
- Log the API name, the target task or port, and the request's stable identifiers.
- Capture more specific statuses before a wrapper collapses them into
KERN_FAILURE. - Distinguish it from
KERN_DENIED, which XNU reserves for a security-policy decision. - Use the API's own documentation and server-side diagnostics to locate the lost specificity.
References
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