From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jun 4 16:32:55 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA06257 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 16:32:55 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ns.mt.sri.com (sri-gw.MT.net [206.127.105.141]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA06237; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 16:32:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nate@mt.sri.com) Received: from mt.sri.com (rocky.mt.sri.com [206.127.76.100]) by ns.mt.sri.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id RAA27996; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 17:32:20 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from nate@rocky.mt.sri.com) Received: by mt.sri.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id RAA05525; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 17:32:17 -0600 Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1998 17:32:17 -0600 Message-Id: <199806042332.RAA05525@mt.sri.com> From: Nate Williams MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: dyson@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams), mike@smith.net.au, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: kernfs/procfs questions... In-Reply-To: <199806042243.RAA00404@dyson.iquest.net> References: <199806042233.QAA04941@mt.sri.com> <199806042243.RAA00404@dyson.iquest.net> X-Mailer: VM 6.29 under 19.15 XEmacs Lucid Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > > You aren't clear *which* sysctl should go away. If you mean sysctl(8), I > > > hope you will be removing gdb, nm, hexdump, etc. as well, as these are > > > all user-unfriendly tools designed for studying and/or adjusting the > > > state of complex, undocumented things. > > > > But users aren't expected to use gdb/nm/hexdump, but sysctl is. Many of > > these parameters *should* be tweaked to get better performance, avoid > > errors, etc... > > > Only some of them, if any. Again I say, if they're not meant to be touched, then don't expose them. It's stupid to expose something that is useless for 99.9% of the population. It's not my place to enforce, but if it were I'd start removing any sysctl's that weren't documented/used. As Mike pointed out in private email, there are 434 sysctl nodes in our system, and 20 of them are documented one way or the other. The rest are magic. I think of sysctl as a bunch of big global variable, or OPTIONS in the kernel config file. If it isn't documented, it isn't needed. Do I have permission to start removing sysctl's that aren't documented/used? Nate To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message