From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Mar 28 18:29:43 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A922116A4CE for ; Sun, 28 Mar 2004 18:29:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from spam2.snu.ac.kr (spam2.snu.ac.kr [147.46.10.68]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 1C64F43D31 for ; Sun, 28 Mar 2004 18:29:43 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from nospam@users.sourceforge.net) Received: (snipe 14447 invoked by alias); 29 Mar 2004 02:29:40 +0900(KST) Received: from nospam@users.sourceforge.net with SpamSniper2.76 (Processed in 0.012850 secs); Received: from unknown (HELO sis1.snu.ac.kr) (147.46.10.36) by 0 with SMTP; 29 Mar 2004 02:29:40 +0900(KST) X-RCPTTO: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Received: from users.sourceforge.net (cisr.snu.ac.kr [147.46.44.181]) by sis1.snu.ac.kr (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i2T2PoLJ179270 for ; Mon, 29 Mar 2004 11:25:51 +0900 Message-ID: <40678A15.6050407@users.sourceforge.net> Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 11:29:41 +0900 From: Rob User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040315 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <200403272013.40447.jaymo@cromagnon.cullmail.com> <200403281614.53868.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> <4066871B.8010005@users.sourceforge.net> <20040328095920.GA33245@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20040328095920.GA33245@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: automounting cd-rom & cd-rw devices X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 02:29:43 -0000 Matthew Seaman wrote: > On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 05:04:43PM +0900, Rob wrote: >> >>What is this sysctl-black-magic about and where is more information? > > > You're right that finding which sysctl is required to achieve whatever > purpose can be tricky. Finding what sysctls exist is as easy as > typing 'sysctl -a', but working out what they actually do -- that's a > different story. sysctls are generally documented in man pages which > may or may not have a title related to the name of the sysctl. Plus > they are usually documented in the *programming* section of the > manual, rather than the user or system administration commands > sections, whose man pages come up by default if there's more than one > page under the same name. > > Let's take the vfs.usermount sysctl as an example. That is actually > documented in mount(2) -- the page describing the mount() (and > umount()) syscall, not mount(8) -- the program for mounting > partitions. If you type 'man mount' you'll get the mount(8) man page > by default. However if you type 'man 2 mount' you find this timeless > wisdom hidden within that page: > > By default only the super-user may call the mount() function. This > restriction can be removed by setting the sysctl vfs.usermount to a non- > zero value. > > How do I know where vfs.usermount is documented? Only by the rather > unsatisfactory means of grepping the whole collection of man pages: > > % cd /usr/share/man > % find . -name '*.gz' -print | xargs zgrep -l vfs.usermount > > (It would be really nice if the text produced by 'sysctl -d' gave you > a reference to the man page(s) where the sysctl was documented.) > > There is a project underway to create better documentation for sysctls Well, at a first glance I found the 'sysctl -ad' to be very incomplete. Although a few entries here do provide an explanation, too many do not and vfs.usermount is among them. Completing this table of explanations would be a good thing to do! Is this related to the project about sysctls docs? Regards, Rob.