libnvme(9)

💅 libnvme(9) — like, the API manual bestie 🎀

okay so this is the libnvme manual page, and today we're talking about one very specific little enum, and honestly? it's iconic. it's carrying the whole status-reporting situation on its back. let's get into it ✨

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✨ NAME ✨

enum nvme_status_type — the type encoding for NVMe return values, when they're represented as an int. that's it, that's the whole vibe 🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

enum nvme_status_type {
    NVME_STATUS_TYPE_SHIFT ,
    NVME_STATUS_TYPE_MASK ,
    NVME_STATUS_TYPE_NVME ,
    NVME_STATUS_TYPE_MI

};

look at her. four constants. no notes. 👑

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🎀 Constants 🎀

every single one of these matters, bestie, so we're doing all four, no skipping:

• NVME_STATUS_TYPE_SHIFT — the shift value for the status bits ✨
• NVME_STATUS_TYPE_MASK — the mask value for the status bits 💅
• NVME_STATUS_TYPE_NVME — the NVMe command status value, typically coming at you straight from CDW3 🧚
• NVME_STATUS_TYPE_MI — the NVMe-MI header status 🫶

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💖 Description 💖

so here's the lore. the nvme_* api returns an int, right? and the sign of that int is doing so much work:

• negative values mean an internal error or a syscall error — like, something went wrong wrong 😭
• zero means success — we love a clean zero, no cap ⭐
• positive values represent the NVMe status — and this is the main character case 🔥

now, that last case (the NVMe status, iykyk) may represent status values from different parts of the transport/controller/etc, and it's at most 16 bits of data. so we use the most-significant 3 bits of the signed int to indicate which type of status it is. the way that works is genuinely so clever 💀

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fr fr: only 16 bits of actual status data live in there, and those top 3 bits of the signed int are the label telling you which kind of status you're looking at. don't sleep on it 🙈

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and that's the page, bestie 🍓 go forth and decode your ints with confidence 💜

— cute little sign-off: this was the API Manual for libnvme(9), dated October 2026. mwah 💋 🌈