xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/vn_fullpath.9 (revision 33644623554bb0fc57ed3c7d874193a498679b22)
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30.Dd November 23, 2008
31.Dt VN_FULLPATH 9
32.Os
33.Sh NAME
34.Nm vn_fullpath
35.Nd "convert a vnode reference to a full pathname, given a process context"
36.Sh SYNOPSIS
37.In sys/param.h
38.In sys/vnode.h
39.Ft int
40.Fo vn_fullpath
41.Fa "struct thread *td" "struct vnode *vp" "char **retbuf" "char **freebuf"
42.Fc
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Fn vn_fullpath
46function makes a
47.Dq "best effort"
48attempt to generate a string pathname for
49the passed vnode; the resulting path, if any, will be relative to
50the root directory of the process associated with the passed thread pointer.
51The
52.Fn vn_fullpath
53function
54is implemented by inspecting the VFS name cache, and attempting to
55reconstruct a path from the process root to the object.
56.Pp
57This process is necessarily unreliable for several reasons: intermediate
58entries in the path may not be found in the cache; files may have more
59than one name (hard links), not all file systems use the name cache
60(specifically, most synthetic file systems do not); a single name may
61be used for more than one file (in the context of file systems covering
62other file systems); a file may have no name (if deleted but still
63open or referenced).
64However, the resulting string may still be more useable to a user than
65a vnode pointer value, or a device number and inode number.
66Code consuming the results of this function should anticipate (and
67properly handle) failure.
68.Pp
69Its arguments are:
70.Bl -tag -width ".Fa freebuf"
71.It Fa td
72The thread performing the call; this pointer will be dereferenced to find
73the process and its file descriptor structure, in order to identify the
74root vnode to use.
75.It Fa vp
76The vnode to search for.  No need to be locked by the caller.
77.It Fa retbuf
78Pointer to a
79.Vt "char *"
80that
81.Fn vn_fullpath
82may (on success) point at a newly
83allocated buffer containing the resulting pathname.
84.It Fa freebuf
85Pointer to a
86.Vt "char *"
87that
88.Fn vn_fullpath
89may (on success) point at a buffer
90to be freed, when the caller is done with
91.Fa retbuf .
92.El
93.Pp
94Typical consumers will declare two character pointers:
95.Va fullpath
96and
97.Va freepath ;
98they will set
99.Va freepath
100to
101.Dv NULL ,
102and
103.Va fullpath
104to a name to use
105in the event that the call to
106.Fn vn_fullpath
107fails.
108After done with the value of
109.Va fullpath ,
110the caller will check if
111.Va freepath
112is
113.Pf non- Dv NULL ,
114and if so, invoke
115.Xr free 9
116with a pool type of
117.Dv M_TEMP .
118.Sh RETURN VALUES
119If the vnode is successfully converted to a pathname, 0 is returned;
120otherwise, an error number is returned.
121.Sh SEE ALSO
122.Xr free 9
123.Sh AUTHORS
124This manual page was written by
125.An Robert Watson Aq rwatson@FreeBSD.org .
126