c - Change read/write permissions on a file descriptor

Question

I'm working on a linux C project and I'm having trouble working with file descriptors.

I have an orphan file descriptor (the file was open()'d then unlink()'d but the fd is still good) that has write-only permission. The original backing file had full permissions (created with S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR | S_IRGRP | S_IROTH), but alas the file was opened with O_WRONLY. Is it possible to duplicate the file descriptor and change the copy to O_RDWR?

psudo-code:

//open orphan file
int fd = open(fname, O_WRONLY, ...)
unlink(fname)
//fd is still good, but I can't read from it

//...

//I want to be able to read from orphan file
int fd2 = dup(fd)
//----change fd2 to read/write???----

Thanks in advance! -Andrew

Answer 1

No, there is no POSIX function to change the open mode. You will need to open it in read / write mode. Since you are created a temporary file, though, I strongly recommend that you use mkstemp. That function properly opens the file in read/write mode and unlinks it. Most importantly, it avoids a race condition in naming and creating the file, thereby avoiding a vulnerability in the creation of temporary files.