getactive(9)

💅 getactive(9) — the Kernel API Manual glow-up

okay so real talk, this is getactive, a read handler for "ipe/policies/$name/active". yes bestie, that whole path. it's a kernel page, from the Kernel API Manual, and it's short and sweet and we're gonna eat it up 💖

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ssize_t getactive (struct file *f , char __user *data , size_t len ,
loff_t *offset );

that's the whole signature, no cap. ssize_t return, four args, and every single one of them matters 🫶

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🌸 ARGUMENTS 🌸

• f — supplies a file structure representing the securityfs node. that's your entry point, bestie, the securityfs node in struct form ✨
• data — supplies a buffer passed to the write syscall. yes, that's what the page says, we're not editing the source material 💅
• len — supplies the length of data. the size of the vibe, basically 🎀
• offset — unused. not me ignoring it. it is literally unused 🙈

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea 🍓: data will be populated with the 1 or 0 depending on if the corresponding policy is active. that's the whole bit. one for yes, zero for no, main character energy from a single byte 👑

like... it's giving "am I active or not" and the answer is a single digit. iconic.

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🔥 RETURN 🔥

• Length of buffer written — Success ✨ slay, we wrote something, that's the length of it
• -ENOENT — Policy initializing/deleted 😭 so the policy is either still booting up or it's gone gone, no policy found

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

the whole friend group, fr fr 💜

• Kernel file ./security/ipe/policy_fs.c
• struct ipefs_file(9)
• read_pkcs7(9)
• read_policy(9)
• read_name(9)
• read_version(9)
• setactive(9)
• update_policy(9)
• delete_policy(9)
• ipe_del_policyfs_node(9)
• ipe_new_policyfs_node(9)

go read the whole squad, iykyk 🌈

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heads up bestie: this page lives under ./security/ipe, dated October 2026, and it's getactive(9) all the way down. that's the sign-off, mwah 💋 🧚‍♀️