[erlang-questions] unix domain sockets with abstract namespace: can't use all 108 bytes

Raimo Niskanen raimo+erlang-questions@REDACTED
Fri Apr 28 14:28:48 CEST 2017


On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 09:34:18AM +0000, Ali Sabil wrote:
> Just a suggestion, but would it make sense to handle abstract unix sockets
> differently at the Erlang level?
> 
> Basically if the path is a binary or list consider it a standard path and
> append the null byte, but if it is for example a tuple `{abstract, string()
> | binary()}` then prepend the null byte instead of appending?
> On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 at 10:42, Raimo Niskanen <
> raimo+erlang-questions@REDACTED> wrote:

It is difficult to reliably detect the other direction i.e in the driver
when you get an address from e.g getsockname(); is it an empty string or an
abstract address?


> 
> > On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 04:46:17PM +1200, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> > :
> > >
> > > My argument goes like this:
> > >  - Linux is too important to ignore
> > >  - The Linux extension is a genuinely useful feature
> > >    done in a rather unpleasant way
> > >  - If you are using AF_UNIX in the portable way, you should
> > >    provide the *length* of the address, not the *size* of the
> > >    struct.  I remember it being that way in 4.2 BSD and have
> > >    cited material from some of the key BSD people that that was
> > >    certainly the intent in 4.3BSD.
> > >  - But if you care about HP-UX, you had better do some experiments.
> > >
> > > Honestly, just doing the right thing is less effort than arguing
> > > about it.
> >
> > Precisely.  Well put!  But what is the "right thing"?
> >
> > The current implementation passes the address given to it as is, but
> > ensures it is correctly terminated as in appending a '\0' at the end
> > that is not counted for address_len, and if that does not fit
> > in the defined size it bails out.
> >
> > That felt like the "right thing" when I wrote it, but you can not set the
> > last byte of the address to non-zero.
> >
> > The new "right thing" could be to add an exception to the above when there
> > is a '\0' first in the address, since that hopefully will count as a
> > correct termination on OS:es that do not understand abstract addresses.
> >
> > The question is if there is any danger in this because we then give a
> > contradiction to e.g bind() because we have not used SUN_LEN(su) as we were
> > told to do...?
> >
> > I believe not, and will try to find the time to do this
> > after our OTP-20.rc1 pre-release.
> >
> > --
> >
> > / Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB
> > _______________________________________________
> > erlang-questions mailing list
> > erlang-questions@REDACTED
> > http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
> >

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-- 

/ Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB



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