more BSD strangeness -- syslogd.c

[Dave Hitz]

 djm at eng.umd.edu (David J. MacKenzie) writes:
 >>>               for (i = 0; i < 10; i++)
 >>>                       (void) close(i);
 >>>               (void) open("/", 0);
 >>>               (void) dup2(0, 1);
 >>>               (void) dup2(0, 2);
 >>>               untty();
 >>>OK, so why is it opening "/"?  Is this a poor man's equivalent to
 >>>/dev/null, and if so, why doesn't it just open /dev/null?

 ...

 > syslog wants to make sure that it doesn't hold open any files on
 > stdin, stdout, or stderr that would tie up a filesystem.  I presume
 > that after that it makes no references to stdin, stdout, and stderr.

This answers the question "why close all open files", but it doesn't
answer the question, "why open anything at all for descriptors 0, 1 and
2."  If it makes no reference to stdin, stdout, stderr, why must there
be something open for them?

I can (and have) made up several answers for this.  Anyone know the real
one?  What happens if you just leave the descriptors closed?

-- 
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