From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Jun 27 6:29:38 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from lrcpc22.epfl.ch (lrcpc22.epfl.ch [128.178.156.58]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F5881529F for ; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 06:29:32 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from almesber@lrc.di.epfl.ch) Received: (from almesber@localhost) by lrcpc22.epfl.ch (8.8.7/ICA.Lc1) id OAA04427; Sun, 27 Jun 1999 14:46:13 +0200 Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 14:46:13 +0200 From: Werner Almesberger To: Francois-Rene Rideau Cc: Linux Kernel , FreeBSD Hackers , NetBSD Kernel , OpenBSD Kernel Subject: Re: Improving the Unix API Message-ID: <19990627144613.B4004@lrc.di.epfl.ch> References: <19990627114526.A10755@ZhengHe.augustin.thierry> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.6i In-Reply-To: <19990627114526.A10755@ZhengHe.augustin.thierry>; from Francois-Rene Rideau on Sun, Jun 27, 1999 at 11:45:26AM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Francois-Rene Rideau wrote: > Robert told me that in some Unix flavors of old, > it was possible to open a file by path with a null access mode (O_NULL ?) E.g. Linux. Very undocumented, but has been around for ages ('92 or such). The main purpose is to keep the floppy drive from spinning up to check for a media change when you open it to access parameters and such. E.g. fdformat, setfdprm, and LILO use this. (NB: some versions of strace print the flags argument in this case as "0x4", although it's really 3.) - Werner -- _________________________________________________________________________ / Werner Almesberger, ICA, EPFL, CH werner.almesberger@ica.epfl.ch / /_IN_R_131__Tel_+41_21_693_6621__Fax_+41_21_693_6610_____________________/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message