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To: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net>
cc: fs@FreeBSD.ORG
From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@dk.tfs.com>
Subject: Re: Open by Inode# 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 03 Aug 1997 04:52:00 EDT."
             <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970803043316.334C-100000@sasami.jurai.net> 
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 11:38:30 +0200
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In message <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970803043316.334C-100000@sasami.jurai.net>, "Matthew
 N. Dodd" writes:
>
>I'm involved in writing an application that would benefit from the ability
>to open a file by its inode# rather than its filename.
>
>A friend of mine has done something similar under Linux/ext2fs (see
>http://www.news.erols.com/patches/ext2_inum.diff for details).
>
>I envision something like 
>
>int iopen(ino_t inode, int flags)
>
>Obviously file creation via this call would be silly.
>
>Is something like this even feasible?

Certainly.  The easiest way is to hack namei so that a filename
of the form '#i[0-9]*' would open by inode.

Be aware that this has significant (negative) security impact.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp           | phk@FreeBSD.ORG       FreeBSD Core-team.
http://www.freebsd.org/~phk | phk@login.dknet.dk    Private mailbox.
whois: [PHK]                | phk@tfs.com           TRW Financial Systems, Inc.
Power and ignorance is a disgusting cocktail.