From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jun 28 4:50:48 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from oknodo.bof.de (oknodo.bof.de [195.4.223.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5E83B14E21 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 04:50:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from phbof@bof.de) Received: (from phbof@localhost) by oknodo.bof.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA02869; Mon, 28 Jun 1999 13:50:39 +0200 From: Patrick Schaaf Message-Id: <199906281150.NAA02869@oknodo.bof.de> Subject: Re: Improving the Unix API In-Reply-To: from Alan Cox at "Jun 28, 99 11:10:15 am" To: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox) Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 13:50:39 +0200 (MEST) Cc: dfr@nlsystems.com, alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, viro@math.psu.edu, sommerfeld@orchard.arlington.ma.us, fare@tunes.org, linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, tech-kern@netbsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL37 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > 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 > > kernfs which was intended for this kind of thing but it rotted after > > people started extending sysctl for the purpose. > > About as much as having a /usr/bin for the slower binaries on the 40Mbyte > moving head disk has relationship to /usr nowdays. /proc is basically > both process and machine state in Linux. It got expaneded on. Maybe nobody noticed yet that 'proc' is an acronym, and has nothing to do with processes per se. Hmm. 'Portable Runtime Operation Control' might be a useful name expansion, alluding to the fact that the interface works across all supported platforms without byte order problems etc. :-) Patrick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message