Andrew Brown has just committed a complete rewrite of the NetBSD kernel’s sysctl infrastructure to the tree. More info here.
New sysctl Infrastructure on NetBSD
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I don’t know anything about NetBSD and sysctl. Can someone quickly sumarize what this is or point to an web-page having an description of sysctl?
Beside that… sounds like an big change in the productive environment of NetBSD.
cheers
SteveB
especially in embedded environments. I mean, how common is ie. MIPS + (“big”) HDD anyway?
Easier adding of nodes implies kernel patching to be more easy. This was a hell on OpenBSD, for me at least.
FreeBSD is busy with rewriting ifconfig:
http://bsd.slashdot.org/bsd/03/12/01/1434229.shtml?tid=122&tid=126&…
And OpenBSD adds privsep et al in (default) daemons.
I’m looking forward to reap the benefits on my BSD boxes
and interested in another analysis.
It’s not a (Net)BSD-only feature.
man -k sysctl
Linux
sysctl (8) – configure kernel parameters at runtime
OpenBSD/FreeBSD
sysctl (8) – get or set kernel state
Essentially the same, though their functions and such is different.
Here’s a manpage
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=sysctl&apropos=0&sekti…
@1st post sysctl gives you the choice to get values from your current running kernel (or change them)
does in “some way” what /proc/ does for linux and much more
like for example, its from sysctl that i get what agp aperture size im using and/or set some options for my nvidia graphics card
its from sysctl that i change and make my box route packets
its from sysctl i can get net traffic usage
its from sysctl that i can set ifconfig options to guess automagically the mtu etc
sysctl makes the bridge between the user and the kernel
thanks for your post.
cheers
SteveB