Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Detecting Pipe Using Bourne Shell
Message-ID: <10089@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 21 Apr 89 17:05:43 GMT
References: <18992@adm.BRL.MIL> <999@philmds.UUCP> <457@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> <910@pkmab.se> <13589@ncoast.ORG>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <13589@ncoast.ORG> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) writes:
>I think it's safe to assume that Streams now passes random ioctls().

The fundamental problem is that ioctls typically have associated data
structures, and if their format is unknown (as would be the case for
ioctls unknown to the local system), there is no way to ensure that
the data would not be mangled by the time it reached a remote system's
ioctl handlers.  The whole ioctl scheme needs rethinking for
heterogeneous networked environments.  I suspect SVR4 will use something
like XDR for passing ioctls over stream connections, but that doesn't
really solve the problem.  All the really good solutions I've been able
to think of are fundamentally incompatible with existing practice.