Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:14:55 -0500 | From | "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <> | Subject | Re: Re: /proc file system, seems to -not- have standardisation ? |
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It's getting to be too hard to follow the /proc discussions, as people are microquoting messages and making detailed micro-proposals, and I simply don't have the time to address each suggestion.
So, I'm going to use an old meeting tactic of saying, "let's look at this from a higher level", and let's ask ourselves what the goal we have of standardizing /proc? Each person making suggestions has been doing so with their own goals in mind, which is not necessarily the same as other people's goals. This makes the conversation very hard to follow.
What is it that you are trying to achieve? It is much better to address it from a specific user problem statement --- the user needs to get <this> information --- and then try to see if /proc is the best way to get that information. For example, if the user wants to get a process listing, with 50 different options for how the fields should be displayed, the user uses the ps program. This is generally considered to be the superior solution over some crazy scheme where you cat magic options to a /proc/pslisting/options file, and then cat /proc/pslisting/info to actually get the ps listing. Sometimes (almost always), having a user-mode program to do the display, instead of increasing kernel bloat by putting things into the kernel, is the right thing.
The point I am trying to make here is that /proc isn't necessary the right answer for any and all problems. Some of the discussions I've heard really make it seem like newbie woodworking students who have just discovered the /proc hammer, and are runninig around trying to see how many nails they can find. /proc isn't necessarily a good replacement for setsockopt(). /proc isn't necessarily a good replacement for /bin/ps.
Please, let's keep a little perspective on things. There are many more tools that we can use to solve a problem than simply making arbitrary changes to /proc.
- Ted
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