Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 06:12:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu> To: Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com> Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>, sommerfeld@orchard.arlington.ma.us, fare@tunes.org, linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, tech-kern@netbsd.org Subject: Re: Improving the Unix API Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.10.9906280603070.24019-100000@weyl.math.psu.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9906281058070.80685-100000@herring.nlsystems.com>
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On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Doug Rabson wrote: > As far as I know, only FreeBSD has a string-based sysctl implementation. > Something which always confused me about Linux' procfs - what have all > these kernel variables got to do with process state? We used to have a Nothing. procfs is a union of 4 filesystems. Historical reasons ;-/ There are: 1) <pid>/* - per-process stuff. Procfs proper. 2) sys/ - what kernfs should be. I.e. fs interface for sysctl tree. 3) openpromfs - sparc only (?), AFAICS not actively maintained. 4) the rest - mostly information advertised by drivers + kcore + kmsg, etc. Stuff that is not covered by sysctls (/dev/core is a symlink to /proc/kcore. 'nuff said.) They are different code-wise and ought to be separated. As soon as we'll have working unionfs (or at least non-opaque mount) they *will* be separated. > kernfs which was intended for this kind of thing but it rotted after > people started extending sysctl for the purpose. /proc/sys on Linux. It was stuffed into procfs because at that moment procfs was the only virtual filesystem (and because they shared some code). To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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