![]() | |||||||||||||
Messages in this thread |
On Thu, 3 Jan 2002 19:56:51 -0500 (EST) Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu> wrote: > It's more than just a name. > a) granularity. Current "all or nothing" policy in procfs has > a lot of obvious problems. > b) tree layout policy (lack thereof, to be precise). > c) horribly bad layout of many, many files. Any file exported by As usual, Al has hit the highpoints (five lines vs. >> 1000 msgs of proc flamewars over time). At risk of boring regular readers, I shall expand: There is /proc, and /proc/sys. /proc is a pain to use in the kernel (seq_* made this better recently, but far from perfect), but is flexible. /proc/sys (aka sysctl) is easier to use, but a PITA for dynamic entries. The "manual formatting" nature of /proc entries has lead to (c) mentioned by Al. This can be alleviated by making the simplest method of exporting data the correct one (ie. more like /proc/sys). The tree layout issues are more complicated. In particular, the following namespaces should be equivalent: Boot command line: 3c509.debug=1 Module parameter: insmod 3c509 debug=1 proc entry: echo 1 > .../3c509/debug Finally, I consider the granularity issue a red-herring: if it's in the kernel, it should be in a logical location. Now, I have a sample patch for a simple "/proc/sys" replacement which follows the "one value per file" (similar to the current proc/sys) and "dynamic is easy" principle (required for widespread use). I also have module loader rewrite and boot param unification patches. http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty Important to realize that we will be stuck with the current interfaces for another stable kernel version (backwards compatibility is a WIP). Once Linus accepts general patches again I shall start pushing things to him. Hope that helps, Rusty. -- Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ | ||||||||||||
| Last update: 2005-03-22 12:15 [from the cache] ©2003-2008 | |||||||||||||