FltCreateFile function

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NTSTATUS FLTAPI FltCreateFile(
  PFLT_FILTER        Filter,
  PFLT_INSTANCE      Instance,
  PHANDLE            FileHandle,
  ACCESS_MASK        DesiredAccess,
  POBJECT_ATTRIBUTES ObjectAttributes,
  PIO_STATUS_BLOCK   IoStatusBlock,
  PLARGE_INTEGER     AllocationSize,
  ULONG              FileAttributes,
  ULONG              ShareAccess,
  ULONG              CreateDisposition,
  ULONG              CreateOptions,
  PVOID              EaBuffer,
  ULONG              EaLength,
  ULONG              Flags
);  

Parameters

Filter

An opaque filter pointer for the caller.

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 it is non-NULL, the request is sent only to minifilter driver instances that are attached below the specified instance.

FileHandle

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

DesiredAccess

A bitmask of flags specifying the type of access that the caller requires to the file or directory. The set of system-defined DesiredAccess flags determines the following specific access rights for file objects.

Do not specify FILE_READ_DATA, FILE_WRITE_DATA, FILE_EXECUTE, or FILE_APPEND_DATA when creating or opening a directory.

Alternatively, for any file object that does not represent a directory, you can specify one or more of the following generic ACCESS_MASK flags. (The STANDARD_RIGHTS_XXX flags are predefined system values that are used to enforce security on system objects.) You can also combine these generic flags with additional flags from the preceding table.

For directories, you can specify one or more of the following ACCESS_MASK flags, which you can also combine with any compatible flags that were described earlier.

ObjectAttributes

A pointer to a structure already initialized with InitializeObjectAttributes. If the caller is running in the system process context, this parameter can be NULL. Otherwise, the caller must set the OBJ_KERNEL_HANDLE attribute in the call to InitializeObjectAttributes. Members of this structure for a file object include the following.

IoStatusBlock

A pointer to an IO_STATUS_BLOCK structure that receives the final completion status and information about the requested operation. On return from FltCreateFile, the Information member contains one of the following values.

• FILE_CREATED
• FILE_OPENED
• FILE_OVERWRITTEN
• FILE_SUPERSEDED
• FILE_EXISTS
• FILE_DOES_NOT_EXIST

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.

FileAttributes

Specifies one or more of the following FILE_ATTRIBUTE_XXX flags, which represent the file attributes to set if you are creating, superseding, or overwriting a file. Normally, you specify FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, which sets the default attributes.

ShareAccess

Specifies the type of share access to the file that the caller requires, as zero or one, or a combination of the following flags. To request exclusive access, set this parameter to zero. If the IO_IGNORE_SHARE_ACCESS_CHECK flag is specified in the Flags parameter, the I/O manager ignores this parameter. However, the file system might still perform access checks. Thus, it is important to specify the sharing mode you would like for this parameter, even when using the IO_IGNORE_SHARE_ACCESS_CHECK flag. For the greatest chance of avoiding sharing violation errors, specify all of the following share access flags.

CreateDisposition

Specifies a value that determines the action to be taken, depending on whether the file already exists. The value can be any of those described following.

CreateOptions

Specifies the options to be applied when creating or opening the file, as a compatible combination of the following flags.

EaBuffer

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

EaLength

Length, in bytes, of EaBuffer.

Flags

Specifies options to be used during the creation of the create request. The following table lists the available options.

Return value

FltCreateFile returns STATUS_SUCCESS or an appropriate NTSTATUS value such as one of the following:

Remarks

On versions of Windows earlier than Microsoft Windows Update Rollup for Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows Server 2003 SP1, minifilter drivers should call FltCreateFile instead of IoCreateFile, IoCreateFileSpecifyDeviceObjectHint, or ZwCreateFile to obtain a file handle for use with ZwXxx I/O routines such as ZwReadFile and ZwQueryInformationFile.

On Microsoft Windows Update Rollup for Windows 2000 SP4, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and later, minifilter drivers can use FltCreateFileEx to obtain a file object pointer for use with FltXxxFile routines such as FltReadFile and FltWriteFile. On earlier versions of Windows, the handle obtained from FltCreateFile can be converted into a file object pointer by calling ObReferenceObjectByHandle as follows:

status = ObReferenceObjectByHandle(             handle,                 //Handle             0,                      //DesiredAccess             NULL,                   //ObjectType             KernelMode,             //AccessMode             &handleFileObject,      //Object             NULL);                  //HandleInformation</pre>  

FltCreateFile 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 FltCreateFile:

• As a fully qualified pathname, supplied in the ObjectName member of the input ObjectAttributes
• As a pathname relative to the directory file represented by the handle in the **RootDirectory **member of the input ObjectAttributes
• Any handle that is obtained from FltCreateFile must eventually be released by calling FltClose.

Driver routines that do not run in the system process context must set the OBJ_KERNEL_HANDLE attribute for the ObjectAttributes parameter of FltCreateFile. Setting this attribute restricts the use of the handle that is returned by FltCreateFile 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.
• Setting the FILE_WRITE_DATA flag for a file also allows writes beyond the end of the file to occur. The file is automatically extended for this type of write, as well.
• If only the FILE_EXECUTE and SYNCHRONIZE flags are set, the caller cannot use the returned FileHandle 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 FltCreateFile 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 opens that have not yet been released with FltClose. That is, the DesiredAccess specified to FltCreateFile 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 FltCreateFile 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 *ShareAccess *parameter 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 FltCreateFile 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.
• The specified file attributes are logically ORed with those already on the file. This implies that if the file has already been opened by another thread, a subsequent caller of FltCreateFile 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 FltCreateFile 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 Zw..File routines, including the following:

• Any byte Offset value passed to ZwReadFile or ZwWriteFile must be a multiple of the sector size.
• The Length passed to ZwReadFile 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 FltCreateFile to get a handle for the file object that represents the physical device and then calling ZwQueryInformationFile with that handle, specifying FileAlignmentInformation as the FileInformationClass. 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 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, 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 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 FltCreateFile 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 FltCreateFile attempts to directly open the reparse point file. In either case, if the open operation was successful, FltCreateFile returns STATUS_SUCCESS; otherwise, the routine returns an NTSTATUS error code. FltCreateFile 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 FltCreateFile 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.

Requirements