From owner-cvs-all Sun Jan 10 04:12:26 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id EAA14146 for cvs-all-outgoing; Sun, 10 Jan 1999 04:12:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from verdi.nethelp.no (verdi.nethelp.no [158.36.41.162]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id EAA14137 for ; Sun, 10 Jan 1999 04:12:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sthaug@nethelp.no) From: sthaug@nethelp.no Received: (qmail 22389 invoked by uid 1001); 10 Jan 1999 12:11:50 +0000 (GMT) To: bde@zeta.org.au Cc: jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, committers@FreeBSD.ORG, darrenr@reed.wattle.id.au, des@flood.ping.uio.no, phk@critter.freebsd.dk Subject: Re: sysctl descriptions In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 10 Jan 1999 23:00:09 +1100" References: <199901101200.XAA13355@godzilla.zeta.org.au> X-Mailer: Mew version 1.05+ on Emacs 19.34.2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 13:11:50 +0100 Message-ID: <22387.915970310@verdi.nethelp.no> Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk > >Precisely. I think that having a reasonably up to date *short* description > >of each sysctl would be extremely useful. By short I mean 80 characters > >or less. Yes, I realize that many of the sysctls really need longer > >descriptions - but short descriptions are still useful! > > Most sysctl names already give a useful short description. I have to at least partly disagree here. Some sysctl names are descriptive, not all are. I'd argue that many of them aren't *sufficiently* descriptive, and a short textual description would be helpful. You and I may know what net.inet.tcp.log_in_vain means - but I think it's not at all obvious unless you look at the source. I definitely didn't know what net.inet.ip.fastforwarding was until I looked at the source. You can also argue that nobody should change sysctl values until they have looked at the source. Do we really want that? It seems awfully restrictive. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug@nethelp.no To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message