sysutils/lsof Author Question (for CLANG)....

[Andriy Gapon]

on 08/11/2012 01:00 Greg 'groggy' Lehey said the following:
> On Wednesday,  7 November 2012 at 16:35:22 -0600, Larry Rosenman wrote:
>> On 2012-11-07 15:39, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>>> On Wednesday,  7 November 2012 at 10:32:23 -0500, Benjamin Kaduk
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Once again, attempting to use kernel internals outside of the
>>>> supported interfaces is just asking for trouble; I do not understand
>>>> why this message is not sinking in over the course of your previous
>>>> mails to these lists, so I will not try to belabor it further.
>>>
>>> IIRC lsof is a special case that always needs to be built with
>>> intimate knowledge of the kernel.
>>
>> This is VERY true.  Since some of the information lsof uses has
>> no API/ABI/KPI/KBI to get, it grovels around in the kernel.
> 
> And until those interfaces are provided, I think this is legitimate.
> If there's anybody out there who hasn't used lsof, you should try it.
> It's good.

Just curious why lsof can't use interfaces that e.g. fstat/sockstat/etc use?
Those base utilities do not seem to experience as much trouble as lsof.

BTW, it is still beyond me why VOP_WRITE could be of any interest to userland code
even for such a utility as lsof.

-- 
Andriy Gapon