Re: /proc guidelines and sysctl

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Alexander Viro wrote:
> > functions that can be used to add a block of /proc names.  However, it
> > has other downsides (allocating silly numbers etc - there should be no
> > need for that, considering that the /proc namespace is alreayd a
> > perfectly good namespace). 
> 
> Oh, please! All we need is sysctlbyname(2) - _not_ a problem, and closes
> all problems with numbers. And it should not work through mounted procfs -
> we can traverse the tree doing comparisons by name just fine. The fact
> that sysctl(8) needs mounted procfs is an artificial misfeature, nothing
> more.

I'll accept a patch that turns sysctl into a proc-only thing.

The current problem is that sysclt tries to be more than proc, and has its
own name-space etc. Not worth it.

		Linus