inode number -> pathname? (4.2 BSD) (but not V8?)

[Donn Seeley]

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 at utah-cs.arpa
40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W    (801) 581-5668    decvax!utah-cs!donn