Re: [PATCH 5/8] man/man7/unix.7: SOCK_RAW is accepted as an alias for SOCK_DGRAM

[Kuniyuki Iwashima <kuniyu@google.com>]

On Wed, 21 Oct 2026 23:07:57 +0200, Günther Noack wrote:
> unix_create() in linux.git net/unix/af_unix.c does:
> 
> 	case SOCK_RAW:
> 		sock->type = SOCK_DGRAM;
> 		fallthrough;
> 	case SOCK_DGRAM:
> 
> so both socket(AF_UNIX, SOCK_RAW, 0) and the equivalent socketpair()
> invocation succeed and create datagram sockets.
> 
> Cc: Kuniyuki Iwashima <kuniyu@google.com>
> Assisted-by: LLM
> Signed-off-by: Günther Noack <gnoack3000@gmail.com>
> ---
> 
> Notes:
>     For completeness;
>     
>     It is more complete to spell it out, but on the other hand, people
>     should not be passing the SOCK_RAW type when they really mean
>     SOCK_DGRAM.  I'm on the fence about whether this is useful.  If you
>     want to omit this one, it also feels reasonable.

Yes, please drop this patch.

There is fallback but only for a historical reason; just to
support too old BSD program IIRC.

We should not say it's officially supported when it's just
converted to SOCK_DGRAM.


> 
>  man/man7/unix.7 | 5 +++++
>  1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/man/man7/unix.7 b/man/man7/unix.7
> index 232fdbf4c3cd..29843235def0 100644
> --- a/man/man7/unix.7
> +++ b/man/man7/unix.7
> @@ -39,6 +39,11 @@ and (since Linux 2.6.4)
>  for a sequenced-packet socket that is connection-oriented,
>  preserves message boundaries,
>  and delivers messages in the order that they were sent.
> +On Linux,
> +.B SOCK_RAW
> +.\" unix_create() in net/unix/af_unix.c
> +is also accepted as an alias for
> +.BR SOCK_DGRAM .
>  .P
>  UNIX domain sockets support passing file descriptors or process credentials
>  to other processes using ancillary data.
> -- 
> 2.56.0
>