FltCreateFileEx2 function (fltkernel.h)

Minifilter drivers call FltCreateFileEx2 to create a new file or open an existing file. This routine includes an optional create context parameter (ECP).

Syntax

NTSTATUS FLTAPI FltCreateFileEx2(
  [in]            PFLT_FILTER               Filter,
  [in, optional]  PFLT_INSTANCE             Instance,
  [out]           PHANDLE                   FileHandle,
  [out, optional] PFILE_OBJECT              *FileObject,
  [in]            ACCESS_MASK               DesiredAccess,
  [in]            POBJECT_ATTRIBUTES        ObjectAttributes,
  [out]           PIO_STATUS_BLOCK          IoStatusBlock,
  [in, optional]  PLARGE_INTEGER            AllocationSize,
  [in]            ULONG                     FileAttributes,
  [in]            ULONG                     ShareAccess,
  [in]            ULONG                     CreateDisposition,
  [in]            ULONG                     CreateOptions,
  [in, optional]  PVOID                     EaBuffer,
  [in]            ULONG                     EaLength,
  [in]            ULONG                     Flags,
  [in, optional]  PIO_DRIVER_CREATE_CONTEXT DriverContext
);

Parameters

[in] Filter

An opaque filter pointer for the caller.

[in, optional] Instance

An opaque instance pointer for the minifilter driver instance that the create request is to be sent to. The instance must be attached to the volume where the file or directory resides. This parameter is optional and can be NULL. If this parameter is NULL, the request is sent to the device object at the top of the file system driver stack for the volume. If this parameter is non-NULL, the request is sent only to minifilter driver instances that are attached below the specified instance.

[out] FileHandle

A pointer to a caller-allocated variable that receives the file handle if the call to FltCreateFileEx2 is successful.

[out, optional] FileObject

A pointer to a caller-allocated variable that receives the file object pointer if the call to FltCreateFileEx2 is successful. This parameter is optional and can be NULL.

[in] DesiredAccess

A bitmask of flags specifying the type of access to the file or directory that the caller requires. See the DesiredAccess parameter of IoCreateFileEx for more information about this parameter and for the list of flag values.

[in] ObjectAttributes

Pointer to an opaque OBJECT_ATTRIBUTES structure that is already initialized with InitializeObjectAttributes. See the ObjectAttributes parameter of IoCreateFileEx for more information and for a description of each structure member.

[out] IoStatusBlock

Pointer to an IO_STATUS_BLOCK structure that receives the final completion status and information about the requested operation. See the IoStatusBlock parameter of IoCreateFileEx for more information about this parameter.

[in, optional] AllocationSize

Optionally specifies the initial allocation size, in bytes, for the file stream. A nonzero value has no effect unless the file is being created, overwritten, or superseded.

[in] FileAttributes

Specifies one or more FILE_ATTRIBUTE_XXX flags, which represent the file attributes to set if you are creating, superseding, or overwriting a file. See the FileAttributes parameter of IoCreateFileEx for more details and for the list of flags.

[in] ShareAccess

Specifies the type of share access to the file that the caller requires, as zero or one, or a combination of the flags. See the ShareAccess parameter of IoCreateFileEx for more details and for the list of flags.

[in] CreateDisposition

Specifies a value that determines the action to be taken, depending on whether the file already exists. See the Disposition parameter of IoCreateFileEx for the list of possible values.

[in] CreateOptions

Specifies the options to be applied when creating or opening the file. This parameter is a compatible combination of the flags listed and described in the CreateOptions parameter of IoCreateFileEx.

[in, optional] EaBuffer

A pointer to a caller-supplied FILE_FULL_EA_INFORMATION buffer that contains extended attribute (EA) information to be applied to the file.

[in] EaLength

Length, in bytes, of EaBuffer.

[in] Flags

Specifies options to be used during the creation of the create request. See the Options parameter of IoCreateFileEx for the list of possible options.

[in, optional] DriverContext

Optional pointer to an IO_DRIVER_CREATE_CONTEXT structure already initialized by IoInitializeDriverCreateContext.

Return value

FltCreateFileEx2 returns STATUS_SUCCESS or an appropriate NTSTATUS value. See the Return Value section of IoCreateFileEx for a list of possible return codes.

Remarks

FltCreateFileEx2 is similar to FltCreateFile and FltCreateFileEx, except that it supports the DriverContext input parameter.

To specify an ECP as part of a create operation, initialize the ExtraCreateParameter member of the IO_DRIVER_CREATE_CONTEXT structure with the FltAllocateExtraCreateParameterList routine. If ECPs are used, they must be created, manipulated, and freed using the appropriate routines.

Filter drivers below the caller of FltCreateFileEx2 should not add or delete ECPs on the caller. Consequently, upon returning from the call to FltCreateFileEx2, the ECP list should be unchanged and may be passed to additional calls of FltCreateFileEx2 for other create operations. Note that the operating system does not automatically deallocate the ECP list structure - the caller of FltCreateFileEx2 must deallocate this structure by calling the FltFreeExtraCreateParameterList routine.

To create/open a file in the context of a transaction, set the TxnParameters member of the IO_DRIVER_CREATE_CONTEXT structure to the value returned by the IoGetTransactionParameterBlock routine.

FltCreateFileEx2 sends the create request only to the instances attached below the specified minifilter driver instance and to the file system. The specified instance and the instances attached above it do not receive the create request. If no instance is specified, the request goes to the top of the stack and is received by all instances and the file system.

There are two alternate ways to specify the name of the file to be created or opened with FltCreateFileEx2:

• As a fully qualified pathname, supplied in the ObjectName member of the input ObjectAttributes.

• As a pathname that is relative to the directory file represented by the handle in the RootDirectory member of the input ObjectAttributes.

Any FileHandle that is obtained from FltCreateFileEx2 must eventually be released by calling FltClose. In addition, any returned FileObject pointer must be dereferenced when it is no longer needed by calling ObDereferenceObject.

Driver routines that do not run in the system process context must set the OBJ_KERNEL_HANDLE attribute for the ObjectAttributes parameter of FltCreateFileEx2. Setting this attribute restricts the use of the handle that is returned by FltCreateFileEx2 to processes running in kernel mode. Otherwise, the handle can be accessed by the process in whose context the driver is running.

Certain DesiredAccess flags and combinations of flags have the following effects:

• For a caller to synchronize an I/O completion by waiting for the returned FileHandle to be set to the Signaled state, the SYNCHRONIZE flag must be set.

• If only the FILE_APPEND_DATA and SYNCHRONIZE flags are set, the caller can write only to the end of the file, and any offset information about write requests to the file is ignored. However, the file is automatically extended as necessary for this type of write operation.

• Setting the FILE_WRITE_DATA flag for a file also allows write requests beyond the end of the file to occur. The file is automatically extended for this type of write request, as well.

• If only the FILE_EXECUTE and SYNCHRONIZE flags are set, the caller cannot use the handle returned in the FileHandle parameter to directly read or write any data to or from the file. That is, all operations on the file must use system paging I/O to read or write file data.

The ShareAccess parameter determines whether separate threads can access the same file, possibly simultaneously. If both file openers have the privilege to access a file in the specified manner, the file can be successfully opened and shared. If the original caller of FltCreateFileEx2 does not specify FILE_SHARE_READ, FILE_SHARE_WRITE, or FILE_SHARE_DELETE, no other open operations can be performed on the file because the original caller is given exclusive access to the file.

For a shared file to be successfully opened, the requested DesiredAccess to the file must be compatible with both the DesiredAccess and ShareAccess specifications of all preceding open requests that have not yet been released with FltClose. That is, the DesiredAccess parameter that is specified to FltCreateFileEx2 for a given file must not conflict with the accesses that other openers of the file have disallowed.

The CreateDisposition value FILE_SUPERSEDE requires that the caller have DELETE access to an existing file object. If so, a successful call to FltCreateFileEx2 with FILE_SUPERSEDE on an existing file effectively deletes that file and then recreates it. This implies that if the file has already been opened by another thread, it opened the file by specifying a ShareAccessparameter with the FILE_SHARE_DELETE flag set. Note that this type of disposition is consistent with the POSIX style of overwriting files.

The CreateDisposition values FILE_OVERWRITE_IF and FILE_SUPERSEDE are similar. If FltCreateFileEx2 is called with an existing file and either of these CreateDisposition values, the file is replaced.

Overwriting a file is semantically equivalent to a supersede operation, except for the following:

• The caller must have write access to the file, rather than delete access. This implies that, if the file has already been opened by another thread, it opened the file with the FILE_SHARE_WRITE flag set in the input ShareAccess parameter.

• The specified file attributes are combined with those attributes that are already applied to the file by using a bitwise OR operation. This implies that if the file has already been opened by another thread, a subsequent caller of FltCreateFileEx2 cannot disable existing FileAttributes flags but can enable additional flags for the same file. Note that this style of overwriting files is consistent with MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, and OS/2.

The CreateOptions FILE_DIRECTORY_FILE value specifies that the file to be created or opened is a directory file. When a directory file is created, the file system creates an appropriate structure on the disk to represent an empty directory for that particular file system's on-disk structure. If this option was specified and the given file to be opened is not a directory file or if the caller specified an inconsistent CreateOptions or CreateDisposition value, the call to FltCreateFileEx2 fails.

The CreateOptions FILE_NO_INTERMEDIATE_BUFFERING flag prevents the file system from performing any intermediate buffering on behalf of the caller. Specifying this value places certain restrictions on the caller's parameters to other Flt..File routines or Zw..File routines, including the following:

• Any byte offset value passed to the ByteOffset parameter of FltReadFile, ZwReadFile, FltWriteFile, or ZwWriteFile must be a multiple of the sector size.

• The Length parameter passed to FltReadFile, ZwReadFile, FltWriteFile, or ZwWriteFile must be a multiple of the sector size. Note that specifying a read operation to a buffer whose length is exactly the sector size might result in fewer significant bytes being transferred to that buffer if the end of the file was reached during the transfer.

• Buffers must be aligned in accordance with the alignment requirement of the underlying storage device. This information can be obtained by calling FltCreateFileEx2 to get a handle for the file object that represents the physical device and then calling ZwQueryInformationFile with that handle, specifying FileAlignmentInformation as the value for FileInformationClass parameter. For more information about the system FILE_XXX_ALIGNMENT values, which are defined in Ntifs.h, see DEVICE_OBJECT and Initializing a Device Object.

• Calls to FltSetInformationFile or ZwSetInformationFile with the FileInformationClass parameter set to FilePositionInformation must specify an offset that is a multiple of the sector size.

The CreateOptions FILE_SYNCHRONOUS_IO_ALERT and FILE_SYNCHRONOUS_IO_NONALERT flags, which are mutually exclusive as their names suggest, specify that the file is being opened for synchronous I/O. This means that all I/O operations on the file are to be synchronous as long as they occur through the file object that the returned FileHandle refers to. All I/O on such a file is serialized across all threads by using the returned handle. With either of these CreateOptions flags set, the I/O Manager maintains the current file position offset in the file object's CurrentByteOffset field. This offset can be used in calls to ZwReadFile and ZwWriteFile. It can also be queried or set by calling ZwQueryInformationFile or ZwSetInformationFile.

If the CreateOptions FILE_OPEN_REPARSE_POINT flag is not specified and FltCreateFileEx2 attempts to open a file with a reparse point, normal reparse point processing occurs for the file. If, on the other hand, the FILE_OPEN_REPARSE_POINT flag is specified, normal reparse processing does not occur and FltCreateFileEx2 attempts to directly open the reparse point file. In either case, if the open operation was successful, FltCreateFileEx2 returns STATUS_SUCCESS; otherwise, the routine returns an NTSTATUS error code. FltCreateFileEx2 never returns STATUS_REPARSE.

The CreateOptions FILE_OPEN_REQUIRING_OPLOCK flag eliminates the time between when you open the file and request an oplock that could potentially enable a third party to open the file and get a sharing violation. An application can use the FILE_OPEN_REQUIRING_OPLOCK flag on FltCreateFileEx2 and then request any oplock. This ensures that an oplock owner will be notified of any later open request that causes a sharing violation.

In Windows 7, if other handles exist on the file when an application uses the FILE_OPEN_REQUIRING_OPLOCK flag, the create operation will fail with STATUS_OPLOCK_NOT_GRANTED. This restriction no longer exists starting with Windows 8.

If this create operation would break an oplock that already exists on the file, then setting the FILE_OPEN_REQUIRING_OPLOCK flag will cause the create operation to fail with STATUS_CANNOT_BREAK_OPLOCK. The existing oplock will not be broken by this create operation.

An application that uses this flag must request an oplock after this call succeeds, or all later attempts to open the file will be blocked without the benefit of typical oplock processing. Similarly, if this call succeeds but the later oplock request fails, an application that uses this flag must close its handle after it detects that the oplock request has failed.

The CreateOptions flag FILE_RESERVE_OPFILTER allows an application to request a level 1, batch, or filter oplock to prevent other applications from getting share violations. However, FILE_RESERVE_OPFILTER is only practically useful for filter oplocks. To use it, you must complete the following steps:

1. Issue a create request with CreateOptions of FILE_RESERVE_OPFILTER, DesiredAccess of exactly FILE_READ_ATTRIBUTES, and ShareAccess of exactly FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE | FILE_SHARE_DELETE.

   • If there are already open handles, the create request fails with STATUS_OPLOCK_NOT_GRANTED, and the next requested oplock also fails.
   • If you open with more access or less sharing will also cause a failure of STATUS_OPLOCK_NOT_GRANTED.

2. If the create request succeeds, request an oplock.

3. Open another handle to the file to do I/O.

Step three makes this practical only for filter oplocks. The handle opened in step 3 can have a DesiredAccess that contains a maximum of FILE_READ_ATTRIBUTES | FILE_WRITE_ATTRIBUTES | FILE_READ_DATA | FILE_READ_EA | FILE_EXECUTE | SYNCHRONIZE | READ_CONTROL and still not break a filter oplock. However, any DesiredAccess greater than FILE_READ_ATTRIBUTES | FILE_WRITE_ATTRIBUTES | SYNCHRONIZE will break a level 1 or batch oplock and make the FILE_RESERVE_OPFILTER flag useless for those oplock types.

NTFS is the only Microsoft file system that implements FILE_RESERVE_OPFILTER.

Minifilter drivers must use FltSetInformationFile, not ZwSetInformationFile, to rename a file.

When a caller of FltCreateFileEx2 wishes to enable reparsing for a volume target, a FLT_CREATEFILE_TARGET_ECP_CONTEXT can be included as an ECP to the ECP list in the DriverContext parameter. If this ECP is present, FltCreateFileEx2 will adjust the target device for the create operation and attempt for find a filtered instance of a volume appropriate for the given file information. Use of this ECP is available starting with Windows 8.

Requirements

See also

ACCESS_MASK

ACL

DEVICE_OBJECT

FILE_FULL_EA_INFORMATION

FltAcknowledgeEcp

FltAllocateExtraCreateParameter

FltAllocateExtraCreateParameterList

FltClose

FltFindExtraCreateParameter

FltFreeExtraCreateParameter

FltFreeExtraCreateParameterList

FltGetEcpListFromCallbackData

FltGetNextExtraCreateParameter

FltInsertExtraCreateParameter

FltIsEcpAcknowledged

FltIsEcpFromUserMode

FltQueryInformationFile

FltReadFile

FltRemoveExtraCreateParameter

FltSetEcpListIntoCallbackData

FltSetInformationFile

FltWriteFile

IO_DRIVER_CREATE_CONTEXT

InitializeObjectAttributes

IoCreateFile

IoCreateFileSpecifyDeviceObjectHint

IoInitializeDriverCreateContext

ObDereferenceObject

SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR

UNICODE_STRING

ZwCreateFile

ZwQueryInformationFile

ZwReadFile

ZwSetInformationFile

ZwWriteFile