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This file is a registry of magic numbers which are in use. When you add a magic number to a structure, you should also add it to this file, since it is best if the magic numbers used by various structures are unique. It is a *very* good idea to protect kernel data structures with magic numbers. This allows you to check at run time whether (a) a structure has been clobbered, or (b) you've passed the wrong structure to a routine. This last is especially useful --- particularly when you are passing pointers to structures via a void * pointer. The tty code, for example, does this frequently to pass driver-specific and line discipline-specific structures back and forth. The way to use magic numbers is to declare then at the beginning of the structure, like so: struct tty_ldisc { int magic; ... }; Please follow this discipline when you are adding future enhancements to the kernel! It has saved me countless hours of debugging, especially in the screw cases where an array has been overrun and structures following the array have been overwritten. Using this discipline, these cases get detected quickly and safely. You should also register the magic number used by ioctls in the table below. This allows ioctls on inappropriate devices to fail, rather than doing something completely unexpected. The magic number is the first argument to the _IO family of macros (see include/linux/ioctl.h) or in general bits 8..15 of the ioctl number. Where ioctls are done on devices with a major device number, it is recommended that you use the major device number as the ioctl magic value (e.g. hd, lp). Theodore Ts'o 31-Mar-94 Magic Name Number Structure File =========================================================================== FASYNC_MAGIC 0x4601 struct fasync_struct include/linux/fs.h PTY_MAGIC 0x5001 struct pty_struct drivers/char/pty.c PPP_MAGIC 0x5002 struct ppp_struct include/linux/ppp.h TTY_MAGIC 0x5401 struct tty_struct include/linux/tty.h TTY_DRIVER_MAGIC 0x5402 struct tty_driver include/linux/tty_driver.h TTY_LDISC_MAGIC 0x5403 struct tty_ldisc include/linux/tty_ldisc.h SERIAL_MAGIC 0x5301 struct async_struct include/linux/serial.h SLIP_MAGIC 0x5302 struct slip drivers/net/slip.h Ioctl Include File Comments ======================================================== 0x00 fd.h 0x03 hdreg.h 0x06 lp.h 0x12 fs.h 'C' soundcard.h 'K' kd.h 'M' soundcard.h 'P' soundcard.h 'Q' soundcard.h 'S' cdrom.h 'S' fs.h subcodes from 0x80, no conflict 'T' soundcard.h conflicts with termios.h 'T' termios.h conflicts with soundcard.h 'T' ppp.h subcodes from 0x90, no conflict 'V' vt.h 'f' ext2_fs.h 'm' mtio.h conflicts with soundcard.h 'm' soundcard.h conflicts with mtio.h 's' pcsp.h 'v' ext2_fs.h 0x89 sockios.h |