From owner-freebsd-hackers  Tue Jun  2 17:20:20 1998
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Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 17:20:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@kithrup.com>
Message-Id: <199806030020.RAA04610@kithrup.com>
To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Reply-To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: kernfs/procfs questions... 
References: Your message of "Tue, 02 Jun 1998 10:57:59 PDT."
             <199806021757.KAA29632@kithrup.com> 
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In article <199806022311.QAA18267.kithrup.freebsd.hackers@implode.root.com> you write:
>   I guess since people are giving their opinions, I very much prefer sysctl
>over a "kernfs". I come from the school that thinks that filesystems are for
>files, not kernel variables. Sorry Dennis.

So you advocate getting rid of /dev?

That was *the* big advantage of unix:  everything was a file.  This meant it
should be in the filesystem.  It also meant a uniform [save for ioctl's, which
arguably should never have been there, and aren't in Plan 9] interface for
files and devices, leading to more generic commands.

syctl is a specialized command.  If you want to have the kernel's name used as
input to a program, you have to do

	sysctl kern.bootfile | prog

or

	prog `sysctl kern.bootfile`

Oh, prog doesn't take any arguments and you can't specify stdin?  oops.  Well,
I guess you could use

	sysctl kern.bootfile | prog /dev/stdin

but, wait, David doesn't want things that aren't files in the filesystem!  So
no /dev/stdin.

Guess you have to do

	sysctl kern.bootfile > /tmp/out
	prog /tmp/out

(Yes, this is a somewhat contrived example, but not *that* contrived.)

4.4 screwed up in making the sysctl system call, instead of doing it as a
filesystem.


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