• Geoff Simmons's avatar
    Re-consider part of the concept, and refactor some code. · ba5ecac5
    Geoff Simmons authored
    POSIX requires that a file description is referenced by mmap(2),
    so the refcount does not reach 0 when the file is deleted while
    it is still mapped. So POSIX-compliant systems can be expected to
    retain the mapping after file deletion.
    
    Unless the VMOD goes to the trouble of copying the file, the safe
    way to update it is to delete it, then write a file with the same
    name with the new contents. A check may happen to run between
    deletion and the new write. But because of the property mentioned
    above, this is not a real problem for memory-mapped files.
    
    So the VMOD will work according to these rules:
    
    - If a check cannot read a file due to ENOENT, it is not an error.
      (It is an error if the file does not exist on initial read.)
      In that case, the file is considered unchanged -- the current
      mapping continues as the cached file contents.
    
    - This means that for the VMOD, a deleted file is *not* considered
      to be in error, provided it could be read initially (that is, it is
      already mapped).
    
    - We set a flag when the file is deleted, so that the condition
      can be detected.
    
    - Users are advised in the docs that the "delete, then write"
      procedure is the *only* method for updating the file that the
      VMOD supports. Other methods may work, some of the time, but
      you do it differently at your own risk.
    
    Also, access(2) is not a reliable means to determine if the file
    can be read and mapped, because if checks permissions against
    the real UID/GID, whereas open(2) depends on effective UID/GID.
    
    So:
    
    - checks begin with open(2), then use fstat(2) for the stat check.
    
    - Path searches are done by attempting open(2) with the filename
      on each directory in the path.
    ba5ecac5
synth.vtc 1.39 KB