Re: /proc guidelines and sysctl

From: Andi Kleen (ak@muc.de)
Date: Fri Jan 07 2000 - 16:58:47 EST


torvalds@transmeta.com (Linus Torvalds) writes:

> On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Alexander Viro wrote:
> > > functions that can be used to add a block of /proc names. However, it
> > > has other downsides (allocating silly numbers etc - there should be no
> > > need for that, considering that the /proc namespace is alreayd a
> > > perfectly good namespace).
> >
> > Oh, please! All we need is sysctlbyname(2) - _not_ a problem, and closes
> > all problems with numbers. And it should not work through mounted procfs -
> > we can traverse the tree doing comparisons by name just fine. The fact
> > that sysctl(8) needs mounted procfs is an artificial misfeature, nothing
> > more.
>
> I'll accept a patch that turns sysctl into a proc-only thing.
>
> The current problem is that sysclt tries to be more than proc, and has its
> own name-space etc. Not worth it.

The nice thing of giving up the sysctl numbers is that it would
be possible to use some ELF section based scheme for declaring sysctl
variables in nice wrapper macros. You could get a sysctl variable with
a single declaration. This would make them a lot more easy. Would you
accept a patch for that?

-Andi

-- 
This is like TV. I don't like TV.

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