International Business Machines Corporation

Kevin John Elphinstone

Trent Ray Jaeger

A mechanism for inter-process communication (IPC) redirection is defined that enables flexible and dynamic management of IPC paths. In some cases, it is desirable to interpose a process on a communication channel. There are a number of uses of such interposition, ranging from auditing communication to capturing requests for a debugger to authorizing operations expressed in the communication. Prior IPC mechanisms typically do not enable dynamic and flexible interposition. Either interposition is ingrained in the process identity or is done in an ad hoc manner (e.g., by inserting code into the kernel). An IPC mechanism is defined that enables a communication from a source to a destination to be arbitrarily redirected. Services, called redirection controllers, are defined that are able to specify the redirections for IPC paths. Redirections may be set up dynamically because the redirection data is not dependent on permanent information like the process identifier, but rather, they are left to the discretion of the redirection controllers.

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Ossining, NY, United States of America

Kevin John Elphinstone