Hi Alex, On Sat, 21 Nov 2020 at 18:45, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) <alx.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi Michael, > > I'm a bit lost in all the *lseek* pages. > > You had a good read some months ago, so you may know it better. > I don't know which of those functions come from the kernel, > and which come from glibc (if any). It always takes me too long to remind myself of the details here :-(. This time, I'll try to write what I (re)learned. Inside the kernel (5.9 sources), in fs/read_write.c, we have: [[ SYSCALL_DEFINE3(lseek, unsigned int, fd, off_t, offset, unsigned int, whence) { return ksys_lseek(fd, offset, whence); } #ifdef CONFIG_COMPAT COMPAT_SYSCALL_DEFINE3(lseek, unsigned int, fd, compat_off_t, offset, unsigned int, whence) { return ksys_lseek(fd, offset, whence); } #endif #if !defined(CONFIG_64BIT) || defined(CONFIG_COMPAT) || \ defined(__ARCH_WANT_SYS_LLSEEK) SYSCALL_DEFINE5(llseek, unsigned int, fd, unsigned long, offset_high, unsigned long, offset_low, loff_t __user *, result, unsigned int, whence) { ... } #endif ]] The main pieces of interest here are the first and last SYSCALL_DEFINEn. The first is the "standard" lseek() system call that exists on 64-bit and 32-bit architectures. The problem on 32-bit architectures is that the off_t type is a 32-bit type, but files can be bigger than 2GB (2**32-1). That's why 32-bit kernels also provide the llseek() system call. It receives the new offset in two 32-bit pieces (offset_high, offset_low), and returns the new offset via a 64-bit off_t argument (result). (I forget the reason why there are 32-bit and 64-bit "offset" args in the syscall.) One more thing... In arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_32.tbl, we see the following line: [[ 140 i386 _llseek sys_llseek ]] This is essentially telling us that 'sys_llseek' (the name generated by SYSCALL_DEFINE5(llseek...)) is exposed to user-space as system call number 140, and that system call number will (IIUC) be exposed in autogenerated headers with the name "__NR__llseek" (i.e., "_llseek"). The "i386" is telling us that this happens in i386 (32-bit Intel). There is nothing equivalent on x86-64, because 64 bit systems don't need an _llseek system call. Now, in ancient times (let's say Linux 2.2), there was a more transparent situation (but the effect was the same): #define __NR__llseek 140 and that system call number was tied to the implementation by this definition linux-2.2.26/arch/i386/kernel/entry.S: .long SYMBOL_NAME(sys_llseek) /* 140 */ == lseek64() is a C library function. It takes and returns a 64-bit offset. It exists to support seeking in large (>2GB) files. Its implementation is in the glibc source file sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/lseek64.c, where it calls _llseek(2) Returning to the <unistd.h> header file, we have: [[ #ifndef __USE_FILE_OFFSET64 extern __off_t lseek (int __fd, __off_t __offset, int __whence) __THROW; #else # ifdef __REDIRECT_NTH extern __off64_t __REDIRECT_NTH (lseek, (int __fd, __off64_t __offset, int __whence), lseek64); # else # define lseek lseek64 # endif #endif #ifdef __USE_LARGEFILE64 extern __off64_t lseek64 (int __fd, __off64_t __offset, int __whence) __THROW; #endif ]] The name "lseek64" is exposed if _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE (which triggers __USE_LARGEFILE64) is defined. That name was part of the so-called Transitional Large FIle Systems (LFS) API (see page 105 in my book), which existed to support the use of 64-bit file offsets on 32 bit systems. It provided a set of interfaces with names of the form "xxxxx64()" (e.g., "lseek64")) which provided for 64-bit offsets; those names coexisted with the traditional 32-bit APIs (e.g., "lseek"). Alternatively, the LFS specified a macro, _FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 (which triggers __USE_FILE_OFFSET64) as another way of exposing 64-bit-offset functionality on 32 bit systems. In this case, the traditional API names (e.g., "lseek") are redirected to the 64-bit implementations (e.g., "lseek64"); > In the kernel I only found the lseek, llseek, and 32_llseek I'd ignore 32_llseek -- I guess that's an arch-specific equivalent of _llseek/llseek. > (as you can see in the patch). > So if any other prototype needs to be updated, please do so. > Especially, have a look at lseek64(3), > which I suspect needs the same changes I propose in that patch. I think that no changes to the types are needed in lseek64(3). But maybe some of the info in this mail should be captured in that manual page. Thanks, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/