From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Feb 24 02:59:29 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A8DB106566B for ; Thu, 24 Feb 2011 02:59:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from julian@freebsd.org) Received: from vps1.elischer.org (vps1.elischer.org [204.109.63.16]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C3A78FC12 for ; Thu, 24 Feb 2011 02:59:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: from julian-mac.elischer.org (adsl-69-105-81-85.dsl.scrm01.pacbell.net [69.105.81.85]) (authenticated bits=0) by vps1.elischer.org (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id p1O2Z8QN038530 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:35:10 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from julian@freebsd.org) Message-ID: <4D65C3D6.9060205@freebsd.org> Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:35:02 -0800 From: Julian Elischer User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101207 Thunderbird/3.1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org, kellydeanch@yahoo.com References: <201102211707.p1LH7c8n075660@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <201102211707.p1LH7c8n075660@lurza.secnetix.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Oliver Fromme Subject: Re: Why is procfs deprecated in favor of procstat? X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 02:59:29 -0000 On 2/21/11 9:07 AM, Oliver Fromme wrote: > Kelly Dean wrote: > > http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/freebsd8.html says that > > procfs is deprecated in favor of procstat. But Plan 9 says > > that procfs is the right way to do things. > > Linux says the same. But it's irrelevant what they say. > FreeBSD is not Plan 9, and FreeBSD is not Linux. > > Procfs has a long history of security vulnerabilities and > other problems. I do not mount procfs on most machines > I'm responsible for, especially not on machines that have > user accounts or services that are not restricted to jails. > > I also think it is inefficient to let the kernel render > data to ASCII, and then have userland tools parse that > ASCII data again. That's ridiculous. I disagree. It was ridiculous when pdp-11s had 500,000 instructions per second but there are many cases to day where it is not ridiculous. I don't think that procfs is by definition bad, and I am no really sure where this "edict" has come from. At fusion-io we have abstracted the control stuff to export as sysctl when compiled in the freebsd driver and procfs in the linux driver. While sysctl is 'ok' I will admit that the procfs variant is a bit more convenient to use. simply because you can enumerate the damned tree without seeing all the contents. > There is no sane > reason for putting kernel data as ASCII text into a pseudo > file system. > > Best regards > Oliver >