_djstat_fail_bits

Syntax

#include <sys/stat.h> extern unsigned short _djstat_fail_bits;

As proper operation of stat (see section stat) and fstat (see section fstat) depend on undocumented DOS features, they could fail in some incompatible environment or a future DOS version. If they do, the _djstat_fail_bits variable will have some of its bits set. Each bit describes a single feature which was used and failed. The function _djstat_describe_lossage (see section _djstat_describe_lossage) may be called to print a human-readable description of the bits which were set by the last call to f?stat. This should make debugging f?stat failures in an unanticipated environment a lot easier.

The following bits are currently defined:

_STFAIL_SDA

Indicates that Get SDA call failed.

_STFAIL_OSVER

Indicates an unsupported DOS version (less than 3.10 for stat or less than 2.0 for fstat).

_STFAIL_BADSDA

The pointer to SDA was found to be bogus.

_STFAIL_TRUENAME

Indicates that _truename (see section _truename) function call failed.

_STFAIL_HASH

Indicates that the starting cluster of the file is unavailable, and inode number was computed by hashing its name.

_STFAIL_LABEL

The application requested the time stamp of a root dir, but no volume label was found.

_STFAIL_DCOUNT

The number of SDA reported is ridiculously large (probably an unsupported DOS clone).

_STFAIL_WRITEBIT

fstat was asked to get write access bit of a file, but couldn't.

_STFAIL_DEVNO

fstat failed to get device number.

_STFAIL_BADSFT

An SFT entry for this file was found by fstat, but its contents can't be trusted because it didn't match file size and time stamp as reported by DOS.

_STFAIL_SFTIDX

The SFT index in Job File Table in program's PSP is negative.

_STFAIL_SFTNF

The file entry was not found in the SFT array.

Below are some explanations of terminology and abbreviations used by the printed messages, which will further clarify the meaning of the above bits and their descriptions printed by _djstat_describe_lossage (see section _djstat_describe_lossage).

SDA (Swappable Data Area) -- this is an internal DOS structure. stat uses it to get the full directory entry (including the starting cluster number) of a file. The pointer to SDA found by stat is trusted only if we find the pathname of our file at a specific offset in that SDA.

SFT (System File Table) -- another internal DOS structure, used in file operations. fstat uses it to get full information on a file given its handle. An SFT entry which is found by fstat is only trusted if it contains files size and time stamp like those returned by DOS functions 57h and 42h. Novell NetWare 3.x traps DOS file operations in such a way they never get to SFT, so some failure messages refer specifically to Novell.

Hashing -- the fall-back method of returning a unique inode number for each file. It is used whenever the starting cluster of a file couldn't be reliably determined. The full pathname of the file is looked up in a table of files seen earlier (hashing is used to speed the lookup process). If found, the inode from the table is returned; this ensures that a given file will get the same inode number. Otherwise a new inode number is invented, recorded in the table and returned to caller.

Portability

ANSI/ISO C	No
POSIX	No