Passing File Descriptors

Named streams are useful for passing file descriptors between unrelated processes on the same machine. A user process can send a file descriptor to another process by invoking the I_SENDFD ioctl(2) on one end of a named stream. This sends a message containing a file pointer to the stream head at the other end of the pipe. Another process can retrieve the message containing the file pointer by a I_RECVFD ioctl(2) call on the other end of the pipe.