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