Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 29 Aug 2002 17:31:41 +0200
From:      Pawel Jakub Dawidek <nick@garage.freebsd.pl>
To:        Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: chown() vs. setfown() prototype in vfs_syscalls.c
Message-ID:  <20020829153141.GR31943@garage.freebsd.pl>
In-Reply-To: <20020829073530.GB33894@hades.hell.gr>
References:  <20020829073530.GB33894@hades.hell.gr>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

[-- Attachment #1 --]
On Thu, Aug 29, 2002 at 10:35:31AM +0300, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
+> Hello,
+> 
+> A friend asked me why he was getting warnings about conversion of
+> unsigned to signed, when calling chown() with:
+> 
+>     chown("/dev/null", -1, -1);
+> 
+> The manpage of chown has a prototype of:
+> 
+>     int
+>     chown(const char *path, uid_t owner, gid_t group);
+> 
+> But the manpage mentions that (uid_d)-1 is the right value for a chown
+> operation that wants to leave the user part of the owner:group set
+> unchanged.
+> 
+> After a bit of research he found that the definition of uid_t was
+> (unsigned int) and that's why -1 was giving him warnings.  But the fun
+> doesn't stop there... The implementation of chown in vfs_syscalls.c
+> uses `int' as the type of the two uid_t/gid_t arguments in the *uap
+> argument, and then calls setfown() which accepts uid_t and gid_t !!!
+> 
+> Then setfown() copies the values in a `struct vattr' at the va_uid and
+> va_gid members, which are also uid_t and gid_t.
+> 
+> The only place where the uid & gid arguments of chown() are int and
+> not uid_t and gid_t is in the prototype of the system call itself.
+> Is this really necessary?  Is there a reason behind it?

Yes, look at VOP_SETATTR man page:

	if (vap->va_uid != (uid_t)VNOVAL || vap->va_gid != (gid_t)VNOVAL) {
	     /*
	      * Change owner and/or group of the file.
	      */
	}

And:

	leila:root:~# egrep "#define.*VNOVAL" /sys/sys/vnode.h
	/sys/sys/vnode.h:#define        VNOVAL  (-1)

-- 
Pawel Jakub Dawidek
UNIX Systems Administrator
http://garage.freebsd.pl
Am I Evil? Yes, I Am.

[-- Attachment #2 --]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (FreeBSD)

iQCVAwUBPW4+XT/PhmMH/Mf1AQE5uAP/XvAwcb+yySvRD3nPeDzsQ7QZKD3ouABD
SLnoxZl3vpzX+4UjXTrAxGQ0ZzJxkvEJnO1raT1zqMQrhdM3/cVhhSPUmlGY92l0
4HqATzv2+t5mK08nOCq4Y8rxLYpL6YPldS7RTvTihZ6bFi5nhk6z6RqPLFp/LiuH
cYB6ExROfaE=
=aI2p
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20020829153141.GR31943>