-x implementations

[John F Haugh II]

In article <668288533.3106 at mindcraft.com> karish at mindcraft.com (Chuck Karish) writes:
>It would be helpful if there were a second interface that could be used
>to check file access based on the effective UID.  Adding a flag to
>access() at this point would not be an acceptable solution; it would
>break too much existing code.

IBM did exactly this with AIX v3.  They have a system call, accessx(),
which takes a flag as an additional parameter to determine who should
be tested for.  You can test for yourself as real id, yourself as
effective id, some notion of "anyone", and some notion of "everyone".
It does all the magic of checking for extended access control lists
and so on.
-- 
John F. Haugh II        | Distribution to  | UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
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"I've never written a device driver, but I have written a device driver manual"
                -- Robert Hartman, IDE Corp.