VGET(9)

💖 VGET 💖

okay bestie, buckle up, we're talking about vget — the kernel dev manual's little icon for pulling a vnode off the free list. yes, that vget. the one in section 9. slay.

✨ NAME ✨

vget — get a vnode from the free list 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <sys/param.h>
#include <sys/vnode.h>

int
vget(struct vnode *vp, int lockflag, struct thread *td);

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so what it does is: it grabs a vnode off the free list and bumps its reference count up. that's it, that's the whole vibe. lowkey iconic.

• vp — the vnode we're removing from the free list. that's your girl right there.
• lockflag — if this is non-zero, the vnode gets locked too. like, locked locked. 🔒

when nobody's using them, vnodes just chill on a free list. and here's the tea: those vnodes still reference valid files, but they can be reused to point at a whole new file at literally any time. no warning, no heads up. so also, these vnodes are often held in caches around the system, like the name cache. iykyk.

when a vnode that's sitting on the free list gets used again — for example, if the vnode was found in the name cache as a result of a call to VOP_LOOKUP(9) — then the new user must call vget() to increment the reference count and remove it from the free list. not optional, bestie. it's giving mandatory. 🫶

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• vnode(9)
• vput(9)
• vref(9)
• vrele(9)

🌈 AUTHORS 🌈

this manual page was written by Doug Rabson. thank you king 💜

and that's the whole page, periodt. this gem came to you from the Debian edition, dated July 24, 1996 — yes it's older than us, and yes it still ate. mwah 💋✨