Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site utah-gr.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!utah-cs!utah-gr!donn From: donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: inode number -> pathname? (4.2 BSD) (but not V8?) Message-ID: <1511@utah-gr.UUCP> Date: Fri, 12-Jul-85 01:20:09 EDT Article-I.D.: utah-gr.1511 Posted: Fri Jul 12 01:20:09 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 12:12:03 EDT References: <6727@Shasta.ARPA> <2397@sun.uucp> <11465@brl-tgr.ARPA> Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 21 No one has mentioned the obvious solution to this impasse... (1) Get 'V8' (occasionally solecized to 'Eighth Edition Unix' :-). (2) Implement a variant filesystem called /inode (a la /proc). To access an arbitrary inode i with major device number m and minor device number n, one merely opens /inode/m/n/i. (3) To associate a directory with a known inode number to a pathname, change directory to /inode/m/n/i (m, n and i as above) and run 'pwd'. (4) Cringe at the security implications of this proposal. Step (1) is obviously the tough one... Step (3) illustrates an asymmetry between directories and regular files (the latter are still very difficult to locate under this proposal). Haven't tried this myself, Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn