Question

I want to send a opened file descriptor between two different programs. So I am using ioctl with named pipes to do so. But there I am getting "Invalid argument" error for ioctl().

#include <stropts.h>
#include "accesories.c"
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>

#define MSGSIZ 63
char *fifo = "fifo";

int send_err(int fd, int errcode, const char *msg)
{
    int     n;

    if ((n = strlen(msg)) > 0)
        if (write(fd, msg, n) != n)    /* send the error message */
            return(-1);

    if (errcode >= 0)
        errcode = -1;   /* must be negative */

    if (send_fd(fd, errcode) < 0)
        return(-1);

    return(0);
}

int send_fd(int fd, int fd_to_send)
{
    char    buf[2];     /* send_fd()/recv_fd() 2-byte protocol */
    
    buf[0] = 0;         /* null byte flag to recv_fd() */
    if (fd_to_send < 0) {
        buf[1] = -fd_to_send;   /* nonzero status means error */
        if (buf[1] == 0)
            buf[1] = 1; /* -256, etc. would screw up protocol */
    } else {
        buf[1] = 0;     /* zero status means OK */
    }
    //printf("From the write %d\n",buf[0]);
    if (write(fd, buf, 2) != 2)
        return(-1);

    if (fd_to_send >= 0)
        if (ioctl(fd, I_SENDFD, fd_to_send) < 0)
        {
            printf("Eroor ::: %s\n",strerror(errno));
            return(-1);
        }
    return(0);
}




int main(int argc, char const *argv[])
{
    int fd, j, nwrite;
    char msgbuf[MSGSIZ+1];
    int fd_to_send;


    if((fd_to_send = open("vi",O_RDONLY)) < 0)
        printf("vi open failed");

    if(argc < 2)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "Usage: sendmessage msg ... \n");
        exit(1);
    }
    /* open fifo with O_NONBLOCK set */
    if((fd = open(fifo, O_WRONLY | O_NONBLOCK)) < 0)
        printf("fifo open failed");
    
    /* send messages */
    for (j = 1; j < argc; j++)
    {
        if(strlen(argv[j]) > MSGSIZ)
        {
            fprintf(stderr, "message too long %s\n", argv[j]);
            continue;
        }
        strcpy(msgbuf, argv[j]);
        if((nwrite = write(fd, msgbuf, 6)) == -1)
            printf("message write failed");
    }

    printf("From send_fd %d \n",send_fd(fd,fd_to_send));
    
    exit(0);

}

The file accessories .h only contain some common include files nothing else.
First I am sending a simple message and then calling send_fd which is first sending a 2 byte message and then have to send file descriptor using ioctl(). But it is not.

Answer 1

It looks like linux doesn’t support I_SENDFD. The comments indicate that I_SENDFD is in the documentation, but is not actually supported, and results in the error message you encountered. The wikipedia entry for STREAMS states the linux kernel does not have any support for streams. The wikipedia entry does point to a couple of third-party packages that could be used to add streams support, but LiS has not been ported to the 2.6 kernel, and OpenSS7 hasn’t had any active development in 4 years.

However, linux does support something similar. This mechanism uses a special message type SCM_RIGHTS to deliver a file descriptor over a UNIX domain socket with sendmsg and obtained from recvmsg. Examples can be found with a simple web search, a complete example seems to be from the book The Linux Programming Interface, with source for sending and receiving.