Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 17:20:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@kithrup.com> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: kernfs/procfs questions... Message-ID: <199806030020.RAA04610@kithrup.com> References: Your message of "Tue, 02 Jun 1998 10:57:59 PDT." <199806021757.KAA29632@kithrup.com>
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In article <199806022311.QAA18267.kithrup.freebsd.hackers@implode.root.com> you write: > I guess since people are giving their opinions, I very much prefer sysctl >over a "kernfs". I come from the school that thinks that filesystems are for >files, not kernel variables. Sorry Dennis. So you advocate getting rid of /dev? That was *the* big advantage of unix: everything was a file. This meant it should be in the filesystem. It also meant a uniform [save for ioctl's, which arguably should never have been there, and aren't in Plan 9] interface for files and devices, leading to more generic commands. syctl is a specialized command. If you want to have the kernel's name used as input to a program, you have to do sysctl kern.bootfile | prog or prog `sysctl kern.bootfile` Oh, prog doesn't take any arguments and you can't specify stdin? oops. Well, I guess you could use sysctl kern.bootfile | prog /dev/stdin but, wait, David doesn't want things that aren't files in the filesystem! So no /dev/stdin. Guess you have to do sysctl kern.bootfile > /tmp/out prog /tmp/out (Yes, this is a somewhat contrived example, but not *that* contrived.) 4.4 screwed up in making the sysctl system call, instead of doing it as a filesystem. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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