vn_fullpath(9) manual page

The vn_fullpath() function makes a "best effort" attempt to generate a string pathname for the passed vnode; the resulting path, if any, will be relative to the root directory of the process associated with the passed thread pointer. The vn_fullpath() function is implemented by inspecting the VFS name cache, and attempting to reconstruct a path from the process root to the object.

This process is necessarily unreliable for several reasons: intermediate entries in the path may not be found in the cache; files may have more than one name (hard links), not all file systems use the name cache (specifically, most synthetic file systems do not); a single name may be used for more than one file (in the context of file systems covering other file systems); a file may have no name (if deleted but still open or referenced). However, the resulting string may still be more useable to a user than a vnode pointer value, or a device number and inode number. Code consuming the results of this function should anticipate (and properly handle) failure.

Its arguments are:

vp

The vnode to search for. No need to be locked by the caller.

retbuf

Pointer to a char * that vn_fullpath() may (on success) point at a newly allocated buffer containing the resulting pathname.

freebuf

Pointer to a char * that vn_fullpath() may (on success) point at a buffer to be freed, when the caller is done with retbuf.

Typical consumers will declare two character pointers: fullpath and freepath; they will set freepath to NULL, and fullpath to a name to use in the event that the call to vn_fullpath() fails. After done with the value of fullpath, the caller will check if freepath is non- NULL, and if so, invoke free(9) with a pool type of M_TEMP.

Manual Pages — VN_FULLPATH

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CONTENTS

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

RETURN VALUES

SEE ALSO

AUTHORS

vp
	The vnode to search for. No need to be locked by the caller.
retbuf
	Pointer to a char * that `vn_fullpath()` may (on success) point at a newly allocated buffer containing the resulting pathname.
freebuf
	Pointer to a char * that `vn_fullpath()` may (on success) point at a buffer to be freed, when the caller is done with retbuf.