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

[Raimo Niskanen]

On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 01:33:45PM +0200, Raimo Niskanen wrote:
> On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 09:44:35AM +1200, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> > 
> > > On 29/04/2017, at 12:28 AM, 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?
> > 
> > Surely an empty string would never have been legal,
> > so if the first byte is NUL and the host supports abstract
> > addresses, it must be an abstract address?
> > 
> 
> If the first byte is NUL and the length is larger than 0 then it must be an
> abstract address.  But when this comes from above (from Erlang) and since
> we do not know if the host supports abstract addresses; if we give
> the kernel a first byte NUL but address length longer than SUN_LEN(su),
> will then we cause harm on some OS?
> 
> I will assume not and rewrite the code, soonish...

I now have a solution that looks at .sun_len if it exists, otherwise trusts
the leading zero.

That works on all platforms but Solaris since it has no .sun_len and when
I get an address from e.g getsockname() on an unbound socket it is all 0's
and the *lenght parameter from getsockname() is unaltered, so that has to
be translated to 108 zeros.  My code on all other platforms (OpenBSD,
FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X) detect this as a zero length address...

I need a way to fix this on Solaris!

Any ideas?
-- 

/ Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB