Re: PROPOSAL: /proc standards (was dot-proc interface [was: /proc

Ricky Beam
2001-11-07T01:10:40Z

On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Martin Dalecki wrote:
>And then converted back to ASCII for printout on the terminal ;-).

Well, they don't always get printf()'d...

>The second problem is that /proc is one of the few design "inventions" in
>linux, which didn't get copied over from some other UNIX box and Linus
>doesn't wan't recognize that this was A BAD DESIGN CHOICE.

/proc is a wonderful thing for what it was originally intended: access to
the process table without looking at the tables in the kernel memory space
(remember SunOS? what happened if /vmunix wasn't the running kernel?)
Unfortunately, /proc has become the gheto of the Linux kernel. It is now
the general dumping grounds for user/kernel interfacing. As a developer tool
it's very handy; it's also very dangerous. Developers then resort to
/proc as a perminant interface between kernel drivers and userland. (In
the *BSD world, this is a kernfs, not a procfs.)

For an example of /proc done right, find a Solaris box. What do you find
in /proc? Gee, process information. Only process information. In. Binary.

--Ricky