term% cat index.txt OPEN(5) File Formats Manual OPEN(5)
NAME
open, create - prepare a fid for I/O on an existing or new file
SYNOPSIS
size[4] Topen tag[2] fid[4] mode[1]
size[4] Ropen tag[2] qid[13] iounit[4]
size[4] Tcreate tag[2] fid[4] name[s] perm[4] mode[1]
size[4] Rcreate tag[2] qid[13] iounit[4]
DESCRIPTION
The open request asks the file server to check permissions and prepare
a fid for I/O with subsequent read and write messages. The mode field
determines the type of I/O: 0 (called OREAD in <libc.h>), 1 (OWRITE), 2
(ORDWR), and 3 (OEXEC) mean read access, write access, read and write
access, and execute access, to be checked against the permissions for
the file. In addition, if mode has the OTRUNC (0x10) bit set, the file
is to be truncated, which requires write permission (if the file is ap‐
pend-only, and permission is granted, the open succeeds but the file
will not be truncated); if the mode has the ORCLOSE (0x40) bit set, the
file is to be removed when the fid is clunked, which requires permis‐
sion to remove the file from its directory. All other bits in mode
should be zero. It is illegal to write a directory, truncate it, or
attempt to remove it on close. If the file is marked for exclusive use
(see stat(5)), only one client can have the file open at any time.
That is, after such a file has been opened, further opens will fail un‐
til fid has been clunked. All these permissions are checked at the
time of the open request; subsequent changes to the permissions of
files do not affect the ability to read, write, or remove an open file.
The create request asks the file server to create a new file with the
name supplied, in the directory (dir) represented by fid, and requires
write permission in the directory. The owner of the file is the im‐
plied user id of the request, the group of the file is the same as dir,
and the permissions are the value of
perm & (~0666 | (dir.perm & 0666))
if a regular file is being created and
perm & (~0777 | (dir.perm & 0777))
if a directory is being created. This means, for example, that if the
create allows read permission to others, but the containing directory
does not, then the created file will not allow others to read the file.
Finally, the newly created file is opened according to mode, and fid
will represent the newly opened file. Mode is not checked against the
permissions in perm. The qid for the new file is returned with the
create reply message.
Directories are created by setting the DMDIR bit (0x80000000) in the
perm.
The names . and .. are special; it is illegal to create files with
these names.
It is an error for either of these messages if the fid is already the
product of a successful open or create message.
An attempt to create a file in a directory where the given name already
exists will be rejected; in this case, the create system call (see
open(2)) uses open with truncation. The algorithm used by the create
system call is: first walk to the directory to contain the file. If
that fails, return an error. Next walk to the specified file. If the
walk succeeds, send a request to open and truncate the file and return
the result, successful or not. If the walk fails, send a create mes‐
sage. If that fails, it may be because the file was created by another
process after the previous walk failed, so (once) try the walk and open
again.
For the behavior of create on a union directory, see bind(2).
The iounit field returned by open and create may be zero. If it is
not, it is the maximum number of bytes that are guaranteed to be read
from or written to the file without breaking the I/O transfer into mul‐
tiple 9P messages; see read(5).
ENTRY POINTS
Open and create both generate open messages; only create generates a
create message. The iounit associated with an open file may be discov‐
ered by calling iounit(2).
For programs that need atomic file creation, without the race that ex‐
ists in the open-create sequence described above, the kernel does the
following. If the OEXCL (0x1000) bit is set in the mode for a create
system call, the open message is not sent; the kernel issues only the
create. Thus, if the file exists, create will draw an error, but if it
doesn't and the create system call succeeds, the process issuing the
create is guaranteed to be the one that created the file.
OPEN(5)