From: Junio C Hamano Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:09:09 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 properly indented] fix start_command() bug when stdin is closed Message-ID: <7vbpzgb94q.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Paolo Bonzini writes: > int start_command(struct child_process *cmd) > { > int need_in, need_out, need_err; > int fdin[2], fdout[2], fderr[2]; > > /* > + * Make sure that all file descriptors <= 2 are open, otherwise we > + * mess them up when dup'ing pipes onto stdin/stdout/stderr. Since > + * we are at it, save a file descriptor on /dev/null to use it later. > + */ > + if (devnull_fd == -1) { > + devnull_fd = open("/dev/null", O_RDWR); > + while (devnull_fd >= 0 && devnull_fd <= 2) > + devnull_fd = dup(devnull_fd); > + if (devnull_fd == -1) > + die("opening /dev/null failed (%s)", strerror(errno)); > + } > + I may be misreading the patch but, this logic always opens /dev/null, if nobody asked for *any* cmd->no_stdXXX and low 3 fds are occupied, and worse, it keeps fd=3 open. Making sure low fds 0, 1 and 2 are open is a good thing. I do not think clobbering fd=3 is good. Also shouldn't this be done only on the side that dup()s fds around, i.e. in the child process after fork()? Why is this done for the parent?