Re: st_size of a symlink

[Jesper Juhl]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2012, Al Viro wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 08:09:14PM +0200, Jesper Juhl wrote:
> > So, from my point of view it looks like procfs is the one who has got it 
> > wrong.
> > We should probably fix that (IMVHO).
> 
> Fix it _how_?  

By returning the size as the number of bytes in the name the link is 
currently pointing at.

> Try to rename a binary you have running in a process.
> Or rename its cwd.  Or rename an opened file.  Watch the corresponding
> procfs symlink (still pointing to the swame object) change.  With
> no way to tell that some sucker had looked at st_size some time ago
> and might get surprised by the change.
> 
Sure, length's may change and an app needs to be prepared for that, but 
that's no reason to always return 0 (zero) for length for links in procfs.
We can do better and return the actual length of whatever the link is 
pointing to currently - just like other filesystems do.

> The fact is, st_size is just a useful hint for symlink target length.

Sure.

> It tells you the likely sufficient size of buffer.  There's a reason
> why readlink(2) returns what it returns; you *can't* rely on the
> earlier lstat() results or, for that matter, any prior information.

I know that. That's not the issue. The issue is that procfs *could* return 
more useful info than it does currently.

> If nothing else, I could rm that symlink and create a new one in
> the meanwhile.  You need to check what it had returned and deal with
> insufficient buffer size.

Of course.

>  By retrying readlink() with bigger buffer.
> With procfs there's just a few more ways the readlink() output can
> change, that's all.
> 
Still not a good reason to just return 0 IMHO.


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Jesper Juhl <jj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>       http://www.chaosbits.net/
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