Debugging statfs? - objective-c

I am using statfs to retrieve the total space available on my hard drive. It returns the correct values most of the time, but sometimes it just returns an error for no apparent reason. I want to find out why it generates an error at seemingly random times.
Is there a way I could check why it's generating an error? If I print strerror(errno) I simply get the message "No such file or directory". This tells me what the problem is, but not whats causing it. I don't see any reason why it's able successfully to find the directory at a certain moment but then not be able to locate it the next moment. Is there any way I could check what's causing this? I doubt if it's a problem with my code because if that was the case, if wouldn't ever return the correct data.
I am passing in '/'as the directory. I am on OS X Snowleopard using Xcode 3.2.6 using Objective-C/C
How could I locate the problem that's causing it to not find the
path?
What are some general reasons that would cause it to be able to find the drive at one moment and not the next?
Code used to retrieve info:
if (statfs(&path, &storageStats))
{
NSLog(#"Total storage stats retrieval failed with errno: %s.\n", strerror(errno));
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
else
{
totalAmount = storageStats.f_blocks * storageStats.f_bsize;
NSLog(#"Storage: %f\n", totalAmount);
return self;
}
I get the "Total storage stats retrieveal failed ..." and the errno message is "No such file or directory"

The first argument to statfs is a char *. Since you are passing &path, that would imply that path is a char. If that is the case, then you are passing a null terminated string only sometimes. (If path is '/' and the next byte happens to be '\0', then the call will work. If the memory after path is not '\0', then you are passing a very strange path to statfs.) You probably meant to do:
char *path = "/";
statfs( path, ... )

With regard to correct sizing of the path string variable:
Call pathconf() to get the value of PATH_MAX. Then use that PATH_MAX value to declare your string variable for your path.
PATH_MAX +1 guarantees you won't find a path longer than your string.

Related

How to read all bytes of a file in winrt with ReadBufferAsync?

I have an array of objects that each needs to load itself from binary file data. I create an array of these objects and then call an AsyncAction for each of them that starts it reading in its data. Trouble is, they are not loading entirely - they tend to get only part of the data from the files. How can I make sure that the whole thing is read? Here is an outline of the code: first I enumerate the folder contents to get a StorageFile for each file it contains. Then, in a for loop, each receiving object is created and passed the next StorageFile, and it creates its own Buffer and DataReader to handle the read. m_file_bytes is a std::vector.
m_buffer = co_await FileIO::ReadBufferAsync(nextFile);
m_data_reader = winrt::Windows::Storage::Streams::DataReader::FromBuffer(m_buffer);
m_file_bytes.resize(m_buffer.Length());
m_data_reader.ReadBytes(m_file_bytes);
My thought was that since the buffer and reader are class members of the object they would not go out of scope and could finish their work uninterrupted as the next objects were asked to load themselves in separate AsyncActions. But the DataReader only gets maybe half of the file data or less. What can be done to make sure it completes? Thanks for any insights.
[Update] Perhaps what is going is that the file system can handle only one read task at a time, and by starting all these async reads each is interrupting the previous one -? But there must be a way to progressively read a folder full of files.
[Update] I think I have it working, by adopting the principle of concentric loops - the idea is not to proceed to the next load until the first one has completed. I think - someone can correct me if I'm wrong, that the file system cannot do simultaneous reads. If there is an accepted and secure example of how to do this I would still love to hear about it, so I'm not answering my own question.
#include <wrl.h>
#include <robuffer.h>
uint8_t* GetBufferData(winrt::Windows::Storage::Streams::IBuffer& buffer)
{
::IUnknown* unknown = winrt::get_unknown(buffer);
::Microsoft::WRL::ComPtr<::Windows::Storage::Streams::IBufferByteAccess> bufferByteAccess;
HRESULT hr = unknown->QueryInterface(_uuidof(::Windows::Storage::Streams::IBufferByteAccess), &bufferByteAccess);
if (FAILED(hr))
return nullptr;
byte* bytes = nullptr;
bufferByteAccess->Buffer(&bytes);
return bytes;
}
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/cppcx/obtaining-pointers-to-data-buffers-c-cx?view=vs-2017
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-live/storage-platform/connected-storage/connected-storage-using-buffers

Turbo C++ : while(fin) vs while(!fin.eof())

I was told that I should be using while(fin) instead of while(!fin.eof()) when reading a file.
What exactly is the difference?
Edit: I do know that while(fin) actually checks the stream object and that when it becomes NULL, the loop breaks and it covers eof and fail flags.
But my course teacher says that fin.eof() is better so I need to understand the fundamental operation that's going on here.
Which one is the right practice?
Note: This is not a duplicate, I need assistance in Turbo C++ and with binary files.
I'm basically trying to read a file using a class object.
First of all I am assuming fin is your fstream object. In which case your teacher would not have told you to use while(fin.eof()) for reading from file. She would have told to use while(!fin.eof()).
Let me explain. eof() is a member of the fstream class which returns a true or false value depending on whether the End Of File (eof) of the file you are reading has been reached. Thus while eof() function returns 0 it means the end of file has not been reached and loop continues to execute, but when eof() returns 1 the end of the file has been reached and the loop exits.
while(fin) loop is entered because fin actually returns the value of an error flag variable inside the class object fin whose value is set to 0 when any function like read or write or open fails. Thus the loop works as long as the read function inside the loop works.
Personally I would not suggest either of them.
I would suggest
//assume a class abc.
abc ob;
While(fin.read((char*)&ob, sizeof(ob)))
{}
Or
While(fin.getline(parameters))
{}
This loop reads the file record inside the loop condition and if nothing was read due to the end of file being reached, the loop is exited.
The problem with while(!fin.eof()) is that it returns 1 if the end of file has been reached. End of file is actually a character that is put at the end of the file. So when the read function inside the loop reads this character and sets a variable eof to 1. All the function actually does is return this value.
Thus works fine when you are reading lines in words but when you are reading successive records of a class from a file, this method will fail.
Consider
clas abc
{}a;
Fstream fin("file");
While(!fin.eof())
{
fin.read((char*)&a,sizeof(a));
a.display(); // display is a member function which displays the info }
Thus displays the last record twice. This is because the end of file character is the character after the last byte of the last record. When the last is read the file pointer is at the eof byte but hasn't read it yet. So it will enter the loop again but this time the eof char is read but the read function fails. The values already in the variable a, that is the previous records will be displayed again.
One good method is to do something like this:
while ( instream.read(...) && !instream.eof() ) { //Reading a binary file
Statement1;
Statement2;
}
or in case of a text file:
while ( (ch = instream.get()) && !instream.eof() ) { //To read a single character
Statement1;
Statement2;
}
Here, the object is being read within the while loop's condition statement and then the value of eof flag is being tested.
This wouldn't result in undesired outputs.
Here we are checking the status of the actual I/O operation and the eof together. You may also check for the fail flag.
I would like to point out that according to #RetiredNinja, we may only check for the I/O operation.
That is:
while ( instream.read(...) ) { //Reading a binary file
Statement1;
Statement2;
}
A quick and easy workaround that worked for me to avoid any problems when using eof is to check for it after the first reading and not as a condition of the while loop itself. Something like this:
while (true) // no conditions
{
filein >> string; // an example reading, could be any kind of file reading instruction
if (filein.eof()) break; // break the while loop if eof was reached
// the rest of the code
}

Undefined reference on libdc1394

I'm using libdc1394-2.2 for camera Bumblebee2.
However, when I try to release bandwith with code below:
if (dc1394_iso_release_bandwidth(camera, val)==DC1394_SUCCESS)
printf( "Succesfully released %d bytes of bandwidth\n", val);
Throws the next error:
undefined reference to `dc1394_iso_release_bandwidth'
However, the function 'dc1394_iso_release_bandwidth', is included in 'iso.h' and this header is included in the main program.
Someone knows how solve the problem?
You're correct, that function is indeed listed in the dc1394-2 stream iso.h header file and with no complex conditional compilation which may cause it to not appear in your translation unit.
One thing that may be an issue is the rather common name iso.h - I'd modify your g++ compilation statement to include a -H flag, which should list the headers being loaded up. It's possible that the iso.h header file you're loading is not actually the dc1394 one.
A long shot, I know, but worth checking if only to discount the possibility.

top command in Mac OS X got truncated

I'm trying to use the "top" command in MacOS X to determine which app is using the resources.
When I do:
top -stats "pid,command"
the command column is truncated, if the process name is too long.
if you look at the activity monitor, the process name is shown properly (with full name) + icon. My questions are:
how to get the full process name?
sometimes the app icon show next to the process name, is there anyway to do the similar thing using objective-c? should I simply navigate to the app contents folder and grab the icns image?
First, if you're trying to get the data programmatically, driving top is almost definitely not what you want to do.
But, to answer your direct questions:
how to get the full process name?
There is no way to control the truncation of commands. You can use the -ncols parameter to set the width of the output for non-interactive output, but that doesn't stop top from truncating if it wants to.
sometimes the app icon show next to the process name, is there anyway to do the similar thing using objective-c? should I simply navigate to the app contents folder and grab the icns image?
No. How would you deal with apps that have multiple .icns files, e.g., for document icons? (Try it with iTunes, for example. If you pick the first .icns, you get the AIFF document icon; if you pick the last, you get the internal-use recent TV shows icon.)
The right way to do it is to get the NSBundle for the application, then do something like this:
NSString *iconFile = [bundle objectForInfoDictionaryKey:#"CFBundleIconFile"];
if (iconFile) {
NSString *iconPath = [bundle pathForResource:iconFile ofType:#"icns"];
// load and display the icon
}
So, how do you actually want to do this, if not by driving top?
Well, what you're asking for is actually not a well-defined thing. OS X has four different notions of task/process/program/application that don't correspond 1-to-1, and that makes life difficult if you want to write a mashup of two programs that use different notions—e.g., top deals in BSD processes, while Activity Monitor deals in OS X applications.
If what you actually want is the same list top uses, it's open source, so you can read it and do the same thing it does.
But the simplest way to get the list of BSD processes is probably the interfaces in libproc.h, in particular proc_listallpids and proc_pidinfo. For example:
int dump_proc_names() {
int buf[16384];
int count = proc_listallpids(&buf, 16384*sizeof(int));
for (int i = 0; i != count; ++i) {
int pid = buf[i];
char path[MAXPATHLEN+1] = {0};
int ret = proc_pidinfo(pid, PROC_PIDPATHINFO, 0,
&path, sizeof(path));
if (ret < 0) {
printf("%d: error %s (%d)\n", pid, strerror(errno), errno);
} else {
printf("%d: %s\n", pid, path);
}
}
}
Obviously in real code you're going to want to allocate the buffer dynamically, return the values instead of just dumping them, get more than just the paths, etc. But this is enough to give you the basic idea. (When you go to get additional information, be aware that you if you ask for any struct, you will get an EPERM error unless you have rights to see every member of that struct. So, don't go asking for PROC_PIDTASKALLINFO if you only want PROC_PIDT_SHORTBSDINFO.
Anyway, since this API deals with BSD processes (and Mach tasks), not applications, it won't directly help you get at the NSBundle you want to provide Activity Monitor-style features.
There is no way to do this that's entirely correct, but you can probably get away with something like this:
NSString *path = processPath;
while (path && ![path isEqualTo:#"/"]) {
NSBundle *bundle = [NSBundle bundleWithPath:path];
if (bundle) {
if ([bundle executablePath != processPath]) return nil;
return bundle;
}
path = [path stringByDeletingLastPathComponent];
}
There are probably alternative ways to do this, each with different tradeoffs. For example, using -[NSWorkspace runningApplications], storing the results in a dictionary mapping the bundle executable path to the bundle, and using that to look up each process is simple, but it only seems to be useful for applications owned by the current user (and probably in the current session). On the other hand, enumerating all bundles on the system, or asking Spotlight, or similar would probably be too slow to do on the fly, but would go out of date if you cached them on first run.
Another option, in place of libproc, is to use libtop.
Unfortunately, Apple doesn't provide it. They do have a libtop implementation, which they use for their top tool, but it's actually embedded in the source to top and not available from outside. You can find the source (at the link above) and embed it into your program the same way top itself does.
Alternatively, both GNU and BSD process utilities have Mac ports (although knowing which name to use with Homebrew/MacPorts/Google search isn't always easy…), so you could build one of those and use it.
However, unless you're trying to write cross-platform software (or already know how to write this code for linux or FreeBSD or whatever), I think that just adds extra complexity.

Variable sized arrays in Objective-C?

Okay, so apparently this works:
void foo(size_t s) {
int myArray[s];
// ... use myArray...
}
Is this really legal? I mean, it must be, because it compiles (where the C compiler would reject it as non-constant). The first part of my question is: how does this work? I assume it's allocating it on the stack? Is this different from using alloca()?
Practically, I found some code that does this:
void bar(size_t chunkSize) {
CFReadStreamRef foo = NULL;
// ...some stuff to init foo...
while (stuffToDo) {
UInt8 buffer[chunkSize];
// ...read some data from stream into buffer
// using CFReadStreamRead()...
}
}
This works. However, when I move the buffer allocation from inside the loop to the first line of the function (directly before foo is declared), the function... stops working. In the debugger it gets to the first access of local variables and then just... exits. I don't see any exceptions being thrown, it doesn't crash, it just program carries on running (in reality the function returns a string and that return value is NULL, which is what the return variable is initialized to). I'm not sure what's going on. The second part of my questions is, in light of the first part, what the heck is going on?
it is legal in C99, although dangerous, and yes -- it is like alloca.
because it's like alloca, you want reasonably sized arrays when allocating on the stack. i am not sure if this is defined if the length is zero, but you could definitely cause a stack overflow if the array is 'large enough' to do so.
as far as what is going on -- pulling it out of the loop should make no difference if the sizes are reasonable. i suspect you are seeing undefined behavior because a parameter value is too large (or perhaps 0) -- you should validate the chunkSize parameter. the assembly will tell you why pulling it out of the loop makes a difference (assuming everything else in the program is well-formed).