From owner-freebsd-hackers  Tue Jun  2 18:32:39 1998
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To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: kernfs/procfs questions... 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 02 Jun 1998 17:20:16 PDT."
             <199806030020.RAA04610@kithrup.com> 
From: David Greenman <dg@root.com>
Reply-To: dg@root.com
Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 18:31:06 -0700
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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?
...
>but, wait, David doesn't want things that aren't files in the filesystem!  So
>no /dev/stdin.

   You are being sarcastic. If you want to discuss this rationally with me,
then please leave out the sarcasm, otherwise I will not respond.

>That was *the* big advantage of unix:  everything was a file.

   Devices have many of the same characteristics of files and it often makes
sense for them to appear in the file hierarchy. Other than having a name,
kernel variables usually do not share these qualities. I think /proc is in
the grey area inbetween since the access methods for some of the data lend
themselves well to read(). Either sysctl or procfs is better than /dev/mem
and /dev/kmem as long as some sort of standardized interface is created. I
do not think that "everything is a file" is generally a good thing, however.
You are welcome to your opinion, but I don't share it.

-DG

David Greenman
Co-founder/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project

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