open(2) with side effects

[Florian Weimer <fweimer () redhat com>]

How common are file names on Linux which, when just opened and closed
(maybe with fstat or fgetattr inbetween), trigger side effects, such as
tape rewind?

Do we still have to guard against that?  Or is that a thing of the past?

At least before containers, the risk is greatly reduced because /dev is
a separate file system these days, so you can only use symbolic links,
and those are more straightforward to deal with (hard links need O_PATH
for a race- and side-effect-free link count check).

-- 
Florian Weimer / Red Hat Product Security