Re: [PATCH] sysctl: Allow /proc/sys without sys_sysctl

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Fri Jul 14 2006 - 16:09:05 EST


Theodore Tso wrote:
On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 09:58:29PM +0200, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
On Wed, 2006-07-12 at 11:24 -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
What is the motivation behind killing the sys_sysctl call anyway?
Sure its more ugly esthetically but it works.
it "works" but the thing is that the number space is NOT stable, and as
such it's a really bad ABI

To be fair, the older, "base" numbers are actually stable, such as
what glibc is depending on, have in practice been quite stable. It's
only the newer fields that tend to be unstable.

But that means we can afford to do an orderly migration away from it;
it's not something that has to be urgently done within a few weeks or
even a few months.


Another alternative would be to publish a limited set of sysctl numbers that will be maintained forever.

-hpa
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