Unix FD Passing

[Lennart Poettering]

On Tue, 05.05.09 08:42, Thiago Macieira (thiago at kde.org) wrote:

> Lennart Poettering wrote:
> >This is a local transport after all. There are processors which can be
> >configured to run in either LE or BE mode, but AFAIK there is no OS
> >that actually allows running processes in LE and BE side-by-side.
> 
> Linux on IA-64 (Itanium).

You say Itanium can do BE?

> >Running 32bit and 64bit envs side-by-side on a single processors is a
> >use-case we need to keep in mind. But running LE and BE processes
> >side-by-side on the same CPU? I am pretty sure that loonies who'd do
> >such a thing will run into a lot of other problems before they run
> >into this particular issue with D-Bus. And then, if it matters to them
> >they can send us a patch!
> 
> They'd probably run into other problems, but nothing major I think. They 
> have to compile the entire library stack in big-endian mode, but that's 
> it.

Sure, they can recompile dbus then, too.

The problem is not generally LE vs. BE. The problem is whether we care
about folks who want to run LE and BE processes at the same time and
communicate via D-Bus.

> In any case, when you receive the file descriptors via SCM_RIGHTS, are they 
> in original byte-order or are they in the native (receiving)? Is there 
> anything to byte-swap?

It's a local transport. They are always in native byte order.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net
http://0pointer.net/lennart/           GnuPG 0x1A015CC4