Messages in this thread | | | From | Perry Harrington <> | Subject | ARMS WAVING!!! Proposal to fix /proc dainbrammage. | Date | Fri, 23 Oct 1998 12:24:22 -0700 (PDT) |
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Okay, now that I've got someone's attention :)
What I propose is that we spend a little time here and establish some well thought out standards for the proc interface.
First, byte ordering:
Everyone knows that big endian byte ordering is sane for a /proc interface, because /proc is designed to be an interface to humans. Besides, we're taught in big endian format as programmers.
Solution: Use the appropriate htonl type functions if we want to display Hex for /proc numbers, else we convert to decimal, or have a specific formatting routine; all of this assumes that the raw data is big-endianized before it's processed. (Note: is there any specific function or macro that I should use to make this right???).
Time formats:
It seems to me that expressing the time constants in /proc would be as simple as:
<seconds>.<microseconds>
If EVER there is a need for processor clock tick, or kernel task switch interval information, it can be added as a well thought out interface LATER.
Linus has already expressed this as a sane format that is independent of the HZ value, etc. The precision of the usec is directly proportional to the HZ value. You don't change the format of the data to get more precision; hence, it's portable.
Now, fixing the timing values and fixing the endianess issues seems like a job I could do for the core kernel stuff if there are any other portability formatting issues, please follow up on this thread.
For specific drivers in the kernel, people who maintain them may want to change those, I don't propose to step on people's toes like that.
I'd appreciate any help or comments people could provide. (meanwhile I'll get the latest sources down and peruse them at home)
--Perry
-- Perry Harrington Linux rules all OSes. APSoft () email: perry@apsoft.com Think Blue. /\
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