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Subject: Re: RFC: sysctl -f filename
From: Ian Lepore <freebsd@damnhippie.dyndns.org>
To: Hiroki Sato <hrs@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <20121202.015048.1122480556487090170.hrs@allbsd.org>
References: <20121202.015048.1122480556487090170.hrs@allbsd.org>
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Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:44:02 -0700
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On Sun, 2012-12-02 at 01:50 +0900, Hiroki Sato wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>  I would like comments about the attached patch for sysctl(8) to add a
>  new option "-f filename".  It supports reading of a file with
>  key=value lines.
> 
>  As you probably know, we already have /etc/sysctl.conf and it is
>  processed by rc.d/sysctl shell script in a line-by-line basis.  The
>  problem I want to fix is a confusing syntax of /etc/sysctl.conf.  The
>  file supports a typical configuration file syntax but problematic in
>  some cases.  For example:
> 
>   kern.coredump=1
> 
>  works well in /etc/sysctl.conf, but
> 
>   kern.coredump="1"
> 
>  does not work.  Similarly, it is difficult to use whitespaces and "#"
>  in the value:
> 
>   OK: kern.domainname=domain\ name\ with\ spaces
>   NG: kern.domainname="domain name with spaces"
>   NG: kern.domainname=domain\ name\ including\ #\ character
>   NG: kern.domainname=domain\ name\ including\ \#\ character
> 
>  The attached patch solves them, and in addition it displays an error
>  message with a line number if there is something wrong in the file
>  like this:
> 
>   % cat -n /etc/sysctl.conf
>   ...
>   10  kern.coredump=1
>   11  kern.coredump2=1
>   ...
> 
>   % /etc/rc.d/sysctl start
>   sysctl: kern.coredump at line 10: Operation not permitted
>   sysctl: unknown oid 'kern.coredump2' at line 11
> 
>   # /etc/rc.d/sysctl start
>   kern.coredump: 1 -> 1
>   sysctl: unknown oid 'kern.coredump2' at line 11
> 
>  Any comments are welcome.
> 
> -- Hiroki

This is cool, thanks.  

Shouldn't there be an update to sysctl.conf(5) to mention the ability to
handle quoting now?

-- Ian