Both virGetLastError and virGetLastErrorMessage call virLastErrorObject method that returns a thread-local error object. However, if a direct call to malloc or pthread_setspecific (probably also due to malloc, since it sets ENOMEM) fail, virLastErrorObject returns NULL which, although incorrectly interpreted by virGetLastError as no error, still requires the caller to check for NULL pointer. This isn't the case with virGetLastErrorMessage that also treated it incorrectly as no error, but returned the literal "no error". This patch tweaks the checks in the virGetLastErrorMessage function, so that if virLastErrorObject failed, it returned "unknown error" which is equivalent to the current approach with virGetLastError and if it returned NULL, "unknown error" was set. Signed-off-by: Erik Skultety <eskultet(a)redhat.com&gt; --- src/util/virerror.c | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/src/util/virerror.c b/src/util/virerror.c index 5d875e3..1177570 100644 --- a/src/util/virerror.c +++ b/src/util/virerror.c @@ -281,9 +281,9 @@ const char * virGetLastErrorMessage(void) { virErrorPtr err = virLastErrorObject(); - if (!err || err->code == VIR_ERR_OK) + if (err && err->code == VIR_ERR_OK) return _("no error"); - if (err->message == NULL) + if (!err || !err->message) return _("unknown error"); return err->message; }