Re: [PATCH v9 08/10] open: openat2(2) syscall

From: Aleksa Sarai
Date: Thu Jul 18 2019 - 22:19:56 EST


On 2019-07-19, Dmitry V. Levin <ldv@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 07, 2019 at 12:57:35AM +1000, Aleksa Sarai wrote:
> [...]
> > +/**
> > + * Arguments for how openat2(2) should open the target path. If @extra is zero,
> > + * then openat2(2) is identical to openat(2).
> > + *
> > + * @flags: O_* flags (unknown flags ignored).
>
> What was the rationale for implementing this semantics?
> Ignoring unknown flags makes potential extension of this new interface
> problematic. This has bitten us many times already, so ...

I am mirroring the semantics of open(2) and openat(2).

To be clear, I am in favour of doing it -- and it would definitely be
possible to implement it with -EINVAL (you would just mask off
~VALID_OPEN_FLAGS for the older syscalls). But Linus' response to my
point about (the lack of) -EINVAL for unknown open(2) flags gave me the
impression he would be against this idea (though I might be
misunderstanding the point he was making).

--
Aleksa Sarai
Senior Software Engineer (Containers)
SUSE Linux GmbH
<https://www.cyphar.com/>

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature