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Date:      Sun, 29 Sep 1996 23:05:32 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com>
To:        dyson@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc:        Karl Denninger <karl@Mcs.Net>, chuckr@glue.umd.edu, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: PS broke again -- what has to be rebuilt to stop this?
Message-ID:  <Pine.AUX.3.94.960929225147.14488A-100000@covina.lightside.com>
In-Reply-To: <199609292040.PAA11764@dyson.iquest.net>

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On Sun, 29 Sep 1996, John S. Dyson wrote:

> > No, I well understand that -CURRENT changes.
> > 
> > That's the point of it being "current".
> > 
> > However, if I want to run a new kernel, I shouldn't have to rebuild half 
> > of the system utilities!
> > 
> I agree that it is a problem (but being honest -- it isn't HALF of
> the utilities :-)).  I am willing to work with the other architectural
> contributors for a good fix.  It is also one of my "hot" buttons.
> 
> John

Hey, why don't we build on the KernFS we already have?  Let's see:

hamby1# mount -t kernfs kern /kern	# This command always works
					# (kernfs is an LKM)
hamby1# ls /kern
bootfile	copyright	hz		pagesize 	time
boottime        hostname        loadavg         physmem         version

Between /kern/boottime, /kern/time, and /kern/loadavg, you can probably
get most of what uptime needs.  The rest of the information is not so
useful, but I think that the best solution is to take whatever kernel
structures the utilities in question need, and make the information
available in ASCII-formatted pseudo-files in /kern.  Between /kern and
/proc (which ps is already using), we _should_ have all the information
these utilities need; then they don't need to be poking around in
/dev/kmem, and furthermore, don't need to be SGID kmem! 

By the way, Linux has done this since the beginning (except that
everything is in /proc), and therefore a ps from kernel 0.99.x, in spirit
at least, will work on the latest 2.0.x kernel. 

-- Jake




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