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Date:      Fri, 04 Jun 1999 13:47:53 +0800
From:      adrian@freebsd.org
To:        Peter Jeremy <jeremyp@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: sysctl 
Message-ID:  <19990604054754.21248.qmail@ewok.creative.net.au>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 04 Jun 1999 14:52:18 %2B1000." <99Jun4.143622est.40321@border.alcanet.com.au> 

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Peter Jeremy writes:
>I notice that sysctl -d doesn't work, and I suspect it never did.
>
>Looking at the code, sbin/sysctl/sysctl.c uses MIB {0,5} to request
>the description of a variable, but the code in sys/kern/kern_sysctl.c
>only supports {0,0} through {0,4}.  Additionally, the macro SYSCTL_OID
>doesn't reference the description string.
>
>I recall some months ago, there was a discussion about the description
>strings, but I don't think it went anywhere.
>
>My feeling is that the description strings should be put into an ELF
>segment which isn't loaded - sysctl(3) would return an offset into
>that segment and it would be up to the caller to extract the string
>from the relevent section of kern.bootfile.  I know this is all
>relatively easy, but my system seems to be missing elf(5) :-), so I'm
>not sure of the details.
>
>kern_sysctl.c also states:
> * This interface is under work and consideration, and should probably
> * be killed with a big axe by the first person who can find the time.
>
>Is anyone actually working on this?

No, not on the interface - I'm working on finishing up the descriptions
of a whole heap of sysctl variables. A rather large patch was apparently
commited a month or two ago with the beginnings of documenting sysctl
variables, but I currently have a lack of time to finish this and consider
perhaps attacking the sysctl interface (and a few things I want to fix
beforehand..)

There was talk of a script being written to walk the /usr/src/sys tree
and generate a sysctl descriptions file. Is someone going to be nice
enough to do this? :-)

Adrian


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