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

[Chuck Burns]

On 11/8/2012 8:17 AM, Andriy Gapon wrote:
> 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.
>
Honestly, if you do not like the way lsof does things, I'm sure patches 
are welcome..

-- 
Chuck Burns <break19 at gmail.com>