From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jun 28 3:12:49 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from math.psu.edu (leibniz.math.psu.edu [146.186.130.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14F3F15459 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 03:12:46 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from viro@math.psu.edu) Received: from weyl.math.psu.edu (weyl.math.psu.edu [146.186.130.226]) by math.psu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA14710; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 06:12:44 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (viro@localhost) by weyl.math.psu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA04566; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 06:12:44 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: weyl.math.psu.edu: viro owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 06:12:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Alexander Viro To: Doug Rabson Cc: Alan Cox , 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 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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) /* - 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