Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1998 13:27:47 -0600 From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com> To: dyson@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams), hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: kernfs/procfs questions... Message-ID: <199806041927.NAA03558@mt.sri.com> In-Reply-To: <199806041920.OAA02171@dyson.iquest.net> References: <199806041910.NAA03447@mt.sri.com> <199806041920.OAA02171@dyson.iquest.net>
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John S. Dyson writes: > > And, I'm not stating that it's to be taken to the polar extreme either, > > but that it's a *better* solution than sysctl. It's still not the best > > solution either, but extending a poorer solution is certainly a step > > in the wrong direction. > > > > I agree with Bruce in that programs are generally a better way of > > configuring things. It's obvious if you know the system what needs to > > be run, and how to get help on it. It also makes documenting things > > easier, which sysctl does not. People already hate to document, and > > making it hard to figure out where/how to document things just makes it > > that much less likely to be documented. > > I disagree for easily one simple reason: sysctl affords an internal > documentation scheme that isn't a hack. Only to a developer, not to a user. Here's some of your log messages for sysctl's that mean something to you, but don't mean a thing to a normal user. vm_param.h vm.pageout_algorithm=???? vm_zone.c Add exposure of some vm_zone allocation stats by sysctl. And these would be, and would help me by? Where should they be documented for the user? man 9 tuning? Are they specific to the zone allocation? I'm not saying that kernfs would make this easier, but if I had a tuning program that allowed me to tune it (man 8 vmtune), then it would be *better* documented. Maybe I'm not screaming so much for the implementation, but the interface and the way that new sysctl are added w/out any regard to documentation/accessing them. :( Nate To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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