MOUNT_PORTAL(8) BSD System Manager's Manual MOUNT_PORTAL(8)NAMEmount_portal - mount the portal daemon
SYNOPSISmount_portal [-o options] /etc/portal.conf mount_point
DESCRIPTION
The mount_portal command attaches an instance of the portal daemon to the
global filesystem namespace. The conventional mount point is /p. This
command is normally executed by mount(8) at boot time.
The options are as follows:
-o options
Options are specified with a -o flag followed by a comma separat-
ed string of options. See the mount(8) man page for possible op-
tions and their meanings.
The portal daemon provides an open service. Objects opened under the por-
tal mount point are dynamically created by the portal daemon according to
rules specified in the named configuration file. Using this mechanism al-
lows descriptors such as sockets to be made available in the filesystem
namespace.
The portal daemon works by being passed the full pathname of the object
being opened. The daemon creates an appropriate descriptor according to
the rules in the configuration file, and then passes the descriptor back
to the calling process as the result of the open() system call.
NAMESPACE
By convention, the portal daemon divides the namespace into sub-
namespaces, each of which handles objects of a particular type.
Currently, two sub-namespaces are implemented: tcp and fs. The tcp
namespace takes a hostname and a port (slash separated) and creates an
open TCP/IP connection. The fs namespace opens the named file, starting
back at the root directory. This can be used to provide a controlled es-
cape path from a chrooted environment.
CONFIGURATION FILE
The configuration file contains a list of rules. Each rule takes one line
and consists of two or more whitespace separated fields. A hash ('#')
character causes the remainder of a line to be ignored. Blank lines are
ignored.
The first field is a pathname prefix to match against the requested path-
name. If a match is found, the second field tells the daemon what type of
object to create. Subsequent fields are passed to the creation function.
# @(#)portal.conf 5.1 (Berkeley) 7/13/92
tcp/ tcp tcp/
fs/ file fs/
FILES
/p/*
SEE ALSOmount(2), fstab(5), mount(8), umount(8)HISTORY
The mount_portal utility first appeared in 4.4BSD.
CAVEATS
This filesystem may not be NFS-exported.
MirOS BSD #10-current March 27, 1994 1