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Revision 1.2 by root, Fri Apr 5 05:04:59 2013 UTC

1NAME
2 IO::FDPass - pass a file descriptor over a socket
3
4SYNOPSIS
5 use IO::FDPass;
6
7DESCRIPTION
8 This small low-level module only has one purpose: pass a file descriptor
9 to another process, using a (streaming) unix domain socket (on POSIX
10 systems) or any (streaming) socket (on WIN32 systems).
11
12FUNCTIONS
13 $bool = IO::FDPass::send $socket_fd, $fd_to_pass
14 Sends the file descriptor given by $fd_to_pass over the socket
15 $socket_fd. Return true if it worked, false otherwise.
16
17 Note that *both* parameters must be file descriptors, not handles.
18
19 When used on non-blocking sockets, this function might fail with $!
20 set to "EAGAIN" or equivalent, in which case you are free to try. It
21 should succeed if called on a socket that indicates writability
22 (e.g. via "select").
23
24 Example: pass a file handle over an open socket.
25
26 IO::FDPass::send fileno $socket, fileno $fh
27 or die "unable to pass file handle: $!";
28
29 $fd = IO::FDPass::recv $socket_fd
30 Receive a file descriptor from the socket and return it if
31 successful. On errors, return -1.
32
33 Note that *both* $socket_fd amd the returned file descriptor are, in
34 fact, file descriptors, not handles.
35
36 When used on non-blocking sockets, this function might fail with $!
37 set to "EAGAIN" or equivalent, in which case you are free to try. It
38 should succeed if called on a socket that indicates readability
39 (e.g. via "select").
40
41 Example: receive a file desriptor from a blockign socket and convetr
42 it to a file handle.
43
44 my $fd = IO::FDPass::recv fileno $socket;
45 $fd >= 0 or die "unable to receive file handle: $!";
46 open my $fh, "+<&=$fd"
47 or die "unable to convert file descriptor to handle: $!";
48
49PORTABILITY NOTES
50 This module has been tested on GNU/Linux x86 and amd64, NetBSD 6, OS X
51 10.5, Windows 2000 ActivePerl 5.10, Solaris 10, OpenBSD 4.4, 4.5, 4.8
52 and 5.0, DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD 7, 8 and 9, Windows 7 + ActivePerl
53 5.16.3 32 and 64 bit and Strawberry Perl 5.16.3 32 and 64 bit, and found
54 to work, although ActivePerl 32 bit needed a newer MinGW version (that
55 supports XP and higher).
56
57 However, windows doesn't support asynchronous file descriptor passing,
58 so "send" and "recv" will have to "rendezvous", that is, they have to
59 wait for each other. Therefore, on windows, it's advisable to run them
60 at the same time to avoid any unnecessary delays.
61
62 Also, on windows, the passing process must give the receiving process
63 the PROCESS_DUP_HANDLE access right for this module to work.
64
65 Cygwin is not supported at the moment, as file descriptor passing in
66 cygwin is not supported, and cannot be rolled on your own as cygwin has
67 no (working) method of opening a handle as fd. That is, it has one, but
68 that one isn't exposed to programs, and only used for stdin/out/err.
69 Sigh.
70
71OTHER MODULES
72 At the time of this writing, the author of this module was aware of two
73 other file descriptor passing modules on CPAN: Linux::FDPasser and
74 AnyEvent::FDPasser.
75
76 The former hasn't seen any release for over a decade, isn't 64 bit clean
77 and it's author didn't respond to my mail with the fix. It does,
78 however, support a snumber of pre-standard unices.
79
80 The latter seems to have similar support for antique unices, and doesn't
81 seem to suffer from 64 bit bugs, but inexplicably has a large perl part,
82 and requires AnyEvent. Presumably that makes it much more user friendly
83 than this module.
84
85 Neither seems to support native win32 perls.
86
87AUTHOR
88 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
89 http://home.schmorp.de/
90

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