Solaris™ Internals: Core Kernel Components

13.5. Path-Name Management

All but a few of the vnode methods operate on vnode pointers, rather than on path names or file descriptors. Before calling file system vnode methods, the vnode framework first converts path names and file descriptors into vnode references. File descriptors may be directly translated into vnodes for the files they referenced, whereas path names must be converted into vnodes by a lookup of the path-name components and a reference to the underlying file. The file-system-independent lookuppn() function converts path names to vnodes. An additional wrapper, lookupname(), converts path names from user-mode system calls.

13.5.1. The lookupname() and lookupppn() Methods

Given a path name, the lookupppn() method attempts to ...