Re: Machine friendly format for /proc files

Matthew J Brown (mjb@sophos.com)
Tue, 18 Feb 1997 11:43:36 GMT


Keith Rohrer writes:
> That sounds fairly good; I'm not sure whether we want 2D tables like
> /proc/net/dev to stay line-per-device, or be line-per-parameter; their
> 2D format does mean you'll have to keep track of both rows and columns
> anyway, and doesn't succumb to any compact 1D format...

The obvious one is to make the new /proc/net/dev a *directory* with
one file per device, and do the same for each other /proc file like
this.

The only disadvantage of this is that the stats from each file will be
read at slightly different times, and therefore won't be completely
consistent. I don't necessarily think this is a disadvantage, though.

As another poster mentioned, we *do* need to create a more sensible
directory structure for /proc files, as well as mandate what
information should be provided for each type of device, etc.
Currently different drivers provide wildly varying /proc information.

Moves to export more tunable kernel parameters as /proc entries seem
to have stalled in 2.1.x too -- we probably want to revisit this.

-Matt Brown