From owner-freebsd-arch  Tue Jan 16 17:30:32 2001
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From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
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Subject: Re: dynamic vs static sysctls?
To: msmith@FreeBSD.ORG (Mike Smith)
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 01:30:12 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: mckusick@mckusick.com (Kirk McKusick), arch@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <200101160727.f0G7Rss00920@mass.osd.bsdi.com> from "Mike Smith" at Jan 15, 2001 11:27:54 PM
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> > I would think that this might be an issue for
> > any application that uses sysctl to get/set the same information
> > repeatedly.
> 
> It is.  It's also useful in the case where you use trailing fields in the 
> MIB to pass arguments to the sysctl handler.

It's also useful for externalizing a sub-arc opaquely for standard
sub-arcs.

For example, the Network Interface Monitoring MIB contents,
being externalized via systctl to a user space SNMP implementation,
and recast in generic form, not dependent on the FrBSD OID-arc.

This also has the benefit of standardizing SNMP consoles, as well
as letting us standardize between BSD's, without playing "dueling
OID-arc origins" (e.g. "BSDI" vs. "FreeBSD" vs. "NetBSD" vs. "XXX"
is not a problem, if you can just point at an RFC and smile).


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.


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