Re: [PATCH] sysctl: Deprecate sys_sysctl in a user space visiblefashion.

[H. Peter Anvin]

Rob Landley wrote:
> On Saturday 01 September 2007 5:16:03 pm Andi Kleen wrote:
> > Rob Landley <rob@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > > A lot of embedded people like to configure /proc out of the kernel for
> > > space reasons.  This would make that noticeably more painful.
> > I had a patch for a sysctl_name(2) for this a long time ago.
> > If it was a serious issue that could be reintroduced.
> >
> > BTW sysctl(2) only needs to be quiet for a single sysctl used
> > by glibc.
> >
> > -Andi
>
> Yeah, I found it:
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/7/10/345
>
> I think that if /proc/sys could be broken out as a separate filesystem, and it 
> was small and simple, the embedded people would probably be happy.  Is your 
> patch significantly smaller than such a filesystem would be?  (Keeping in 
> mind that the smallest thing you can do is run from initramfs, and I think 
> that's pulling in libfs already...)

IMO, the big problem with /proc/sys (and, for that matter, /sys) is 
mainly that they have to live in the process namespace, which is highly 
awkward when one uses chroot().

One way to solve *that* might be a system call to get a file descriptor 
to the root of sysfs or procsysfs which can be used with openat().  That 
has its own perils, of course...

	-hpa
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