Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 28 Jun 1999 06:12:44 -0400 (EDT) | From | Alexander Viro <> | Subject | Re: Improving the Unix API |
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On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Doug Rabson wrote:
> As far as I know, only FreeBSD has a string-based sysctl implementation. > Something which always confused me about Linux' procfs - what have all > these kernel variables got to do with process state? We used to have a
Nothing. procfs is a union of 4 filesystems. Historical reasons ;-/ There are: 1) <pid>/* - per-process stuff. Procfs proper. 2) sys/ - what kernfs should be. I.e. fs interface for sysctl tree. 3) openpromfs - sparc only (?), AFAICS not actively maintained. 4) the rest - mostly information advertised by drivers + kcore + kmsg, etc. Stuff that is not covered by sysctls (/dev/core is a symlink to /proc/kcore. 'nuff said.)
They are different code-wise and ought to be separated. As soon as we'll have working unionfs (or at least non-opaque mount) they *will* be separated.
> kernfs which was intended for this kind of thing but it rotted after > people started extending sysctl for the purpose.
/proc/sys on Linux. It was stuffed into procfs because at that moment procfs was the only virtual filesystem (and because they shared some code).
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