Re: For review: open_by_name_at(2) man page [v2]

[NeilBrown]

On Tue, 18 Mar 2014 13:55:15 +0100 "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)"
<mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Aneesh, (and others)
> 
> After integrating review comments from NeilBown and Christoph Hellwig,
> here is draft 2 of a man page I've written for name_to_handle_at(2) and
> open_by_name_at(2). Especially thanks to Neil's comments, several parts
> of the page underwent a substantial rewrite. Would you be willing to 
> review it please, and let me know of any corrections/improvements?

I didn't notice before but above and in $SUBJ I see "open_by_name_at", which
is fictitious :-)

> 
> Together, the
> .I pathname
> and
> .I dirfd
> arguments identify the file for which a handle is to obtained.
                                                      ^be


> 
> The
> .I flags
> argument is a bit mask constructed by ORing together
> zero or more of the following value:
                                     ^s


> .TP
> .B AT_EMPTY_PATH
> Allow
> .I pathname
> to be an empty string.
> See above.
> (which may have been obtained using the
> .BR open (2)
> .B O_PATH
> flag).

What "may have been obtained" ??


> The
> .I flags
> argument
> is as for
> .BR open (2).
> .\" FIXME: Confirm that the following is intended behavior.
> .\"        (It certainly seems to be the behavior, from experimenting.)
> If
> .I handle
> refers to a symbolic link, the caller must specify the
> .B O_PATH
> flag, and the symbolic link is not dereferenced (the
> .B O_NOFOLLOW
> flag, if specified, is ignored).

It certainly sounds like reasonable behaviour.  I cannot comment on intention
though.
Are you bothered that O_PATH is needed for symlinks?  An fd on a symlink is a
sufficiently unusual thing that it seems reasonable for a programmer to
explicitly say they are expecting one.


> 
> In the event of an error, both system calls return \-1 and set
> .I errno
> to indicate the cause of the error.
> .SH ERRORS
> .BR name_to_handle_at ()
> and
> .BR open_by_handle_at ()
> can fail for the same errors as
> .BR openat (2).
> In addition, they can fail with the errors noted below.

Should you mention EFAULT if mount_id or handle are not valid pointers?


> 
> Not all filesystem types support the translation of pathnames to
> file handles.
> .\" FIXME NeilBrown noted:
> .\"    ESTALE is also returned if the filesystem does not support
> .\"    file-handle -> file mappings.
> .\"    On filesystems which don't provide export_operations (/sys /proc
> .\"    ubifs romfs cramfs nfs coda ... several others) name_to_handle_at
> .\"    will produce a generic handle using the 32 bit inode and 32 bit
> .\"    i_generation. open_by_name_at given this (or any) filehandle
> .\"    will fail with ESTALE.
> .\" However, on /proc and /sys, at least, name_to_handle_at() fails with
> .\" EOPNOTSUPP. Are there really filesystems that can deliver ESTALE (the
> .\" same error as for an invalid file handle) in the above circumstances?

This is all wrong - discard it :-)

NeilBrown

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