Subject: Useful calls taking filehandles
To: None <tech-kern@netbsd.org>
From: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@nas.nasa.gov>
List: tech-kern
Date: 02/25/1999 16:52:52
My last message had diffs for making filehandle useful outside of a
fileserver context. Now I'd like suggestions on what calls would make
sense to take filehandles.

Obviously we want an fhopen which opens a file given a filehandle.

Right now we have a number of routines which can be invoked given a path,
or invoked for an open file. Like stat/fstat, chown/fchown, etc. It would
be nice to add filehandle variants for some, but I don't think they all
need fh variants.

Right now we have nine routines which would be sensicable in file handle
variants: 

fchdir fchflags fchmod fchown futimes fktrace fpathconf fstat fstatfs

I think that fhstat and fhstatfs would make sense. I don't think that
fhktrace makes sense. As for fhchflags, fhchmod, fhchown, and fhutimes, I
think that if they're needed, it will be in a program that needs to call
all of them, one at a time (like some sort of restore). So it'd be easier
to do an fhopen and then call fchown, futimes, etc. on the open file. I'm
uncertain what to do about fhpathconf.

Thoughts?

Take care,

Bill