[Libguestfs] IRC question about consuming stdin

12:39 < eblake> rwmjones: 'nbdkit -s sh -' won't work, neither will 'nbdkit -s curl password=-' 12:40 < eblake> should we have an easier way for plugins to detect whether they can safely consume stdin and/or write to stdout during .config? 12:40 < eblake> and in turn, have nbdkit_read_password() check whether reading from stdin is safe? 12:40 < eblake> so that we fail fast rather than trying to get to .open 12:44 < eblake> I was trying to write a patch that would guarantee stdin/out are /dev/null from .open onwards, but found (the hard way) that we have several instances where we depend on stdin/out interaction during .config (at least, when -s is not in use) 12:45 < eblake> right now, when nbdkit daemonizes, stdin/out are /dev/null, but with -f, or with --run, they are still whatever was passed to nbdkit, which feels inconsistent 12:46 < eblake> and with -s, if the plugin accidentally uses stdin/out, it will corrupt the NBD protocol 12:49 < eblake> I'm wondering if we should add 'bool nbdkit_is_interactive()' [or better name] which returns false for -s, true otherwise, so .config can decide when it is safe to consume stdin (I haven't looked at this, but as my IRC access is for some reason up and down today, it's probably best to continue this discussion on email) Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any software inside the virtual machine. Supports Linux and Windows. http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/