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Date:      Fri, 16 Apr 1999 16:48:26 +1000
From:      Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
To:        phk@critter.freebsd.dk, robert+freebsd@cyrus.watson.org
Cc:        freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: POSIX.1E auditing support, an initial pass and some questions
Message-ID:  <199904160648.QAA06234@godzilla.zeta.org.au>

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>>I had suspected (and observed) as much.  What is the rational behind
>>having the name lookup pull the pathname into the kernel as opposed to
>>using a copyin in the syscall and passing it in as an argument?
>>Presumably someone, somewhere has to allocate space on the stack, and if

Space is allocated by zalloc().  Not long ago, space was allocated by
malloc().  The kernel stack may be too small to hold a name of length
MAXPATHLEN.

>>it's done in the syscall function then more argument processing is done in
>>one place?  This would make at least a bit more available to an auditing
>>layer in the syscall.
>
>I think it is an old thing, conserving kernel memory.  Indeed it may
>not make sense today where the vfs-name-cache is so much more efficient.
>Changing it may be a PITA.

I think it's just centralisation.  The pathname is copied in in one place
instead of in 100's of syscall functions.

Bruce


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