Re: /proc guidelines and sysctl

[Martin Dalecki]

"Albert D. Cahalan" wrote:
> 
> Marcin Dalecki writes:
> > Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> >> sysctl is deprecated. It's useful in one way only: it has some nice
> >> 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).
> >
> > Are you just blind to the neverending format/compatiblity/
> > parsing/performance problems the whole idea behing /proc induces inherently?
> 
> I'd expect a pure kernel programmer to be blind to this.
> The problems with assigning numbers may well seem worse.
> 
> > My favorite examples for how broken they are
> >
> > /proc/stat -- the information there is entierly *broken* misleading and
> >                    incomplete. (leftover from early days.)
> 
> Have an alternative? I need this for "top" display and HZ calculation.
> 
> > /proc/cpuinfo -- same here static data. uname is since the beginnging
> >                    the proper interface for this stuff.
> 
> This could be formatted once. The code to produce this could be
> marked as init code.

Most of the stuff in cpuinfo should be just loggen on boot. The rest
should
be in uname.

> > /proc/ksyms -- entierly redundant and not used by the modutils.
> 
> This is used for WCHAN.

You could better get this info through the same syscall interface which
insmod is preferable using. (cut and paste coding required actually...)

> > /proc/kmsg -- entierly redundant to syslog.
> 
> Sure, except that /proc/kmsg supplies the syslog via klogd.
> 
> > root:/proc# cat meminfo
> >         total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
> > Mem: 64577536 62787584 1789952 20643840 1339392 17186816
> > Swap: 139821056 36478976 103342080
> > MemTotal: 63064 kB
> > MemFree: 1748 kB
> > MemShared: 20160 kB
> > Buffers: 1308 kB
> > Cached: 16784 kB
> > SwapTotal: 136544 kB
> > SwapFree: 100920 kB
> >
> > Wonderfull!!!! The same data twice, albeit no one of them easly
> > parsed! Easly parsed? By what? AWK? SED? or should the procps
> > utilities beeing implemented in damn PERL? (Some loosers who
> > don't know C would apreciate this, certainly) !!!!!
> 
> Feel free to kill the old values at the top.

Naa I fear... becouse I remember the days when they where actually
killed.

--
	Marcin Dalecki