Re: [PATCHv2] Undeprecate the sysctl system call

Andrew Morton
2006-10-18T19:31:29Z

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:41:01 +0100
Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:

> Ar Mer, 2006-10-18 am 12:20 -0400, ysgrifennodd Cal Peake:
> > Until something better comes along this'll get us back to the status quo.
> >
> > @Andrew, this patch is a replacement for the one from yesterday.
> >
> > From: Cal Peake <cp@absolutedigital.net>
> >
> > Undeprecate the sysctl system call and default to always include it with
> > the option for embedded folks to exclude it. Also, remove it's entry from
> > the feature removal file and fixup the comment in it's header file.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Cal Peake <cp@absolutedigital.net>
>
> Acked-by: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com>
>
> Maybe also add "Do not add new entries to these tables" to address
> Andi's concern about people updating them.

I agree that those tables in sysctl.h are a right royal pita to maintain.
And there sure is a lot of gunk in there which it would be nice to scrap.

So Andi's plan sounds reasonable to me - it'd only take a few lines to
implement sysctl(CTL_KERN/KERN_VERSION) as a back-compat thing (and it'll
be faster!). And we add a printk so we find out which other sysctls (if
any) are being used in the wild.

?