From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jun 2 13:36:53 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA05779 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Tue, 2 Jun 1998 13:36:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp01.primenet.com (daemon@smtp01.primenet.com [206.165.6.131]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA05762; Tue, 2 Jun 1998 13:36:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert@usr06.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp01.primenet.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA23285; Tue, 2 Jun 1998 13:36:31 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr06.primenet.com(206.165.6.206) via SMTP by smtp01.primenet.com, id smtpd023203; Tue Jun 2 13:36:26 1998 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr06.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA06082; Tue, 2 Jun 1998 13:36:22 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199806022036.NAA06082@usr06.primenet.com> Subject: Re: kernfs/procfs questions... To: dyson@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 20:36:22 +0000 (GMT) Cc: mike@dingo.cdrom.com, mike@smith.net.au, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199806021650.LAA02867@dyson.iquest.net> from "John S. Dyson" at Jun 2, 98 11:50:32 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] 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 > > Sure; but can't these sort of improvements be made to the methods for > > manipulating procfs nodes? What other drawbacks are there to the FS > > model? > > It is bogus that writing to a file "controls" something inside > the system, that is kind-of what SNMP is for. Now, if someone > wants a kernfs that is compatible with our sysctl, they should > be able to use the sysctl info to build the kernfs. I think the sysctl infrastructure implementation lacks sufficient dynamism. There is no concept of a subschema entry (for example) which would allow for runtime extension rather than linktime agregation (which is a much simpler problem). The non-dynamic portions of the framework, inherited from the 4.4 code base, are also quite problematic. Not that I advocate a kernfs... but a very dynamic procfs could "know" from the accessor what ABI it was being invoked from, if it had the necessary parametric hints (which it currently lacks). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message