From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751438AbWGMFr7 (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Jul 2006 01:47:59 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751442AbWGMFr6 (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Jul 2006 01:47:58 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([192.83.249.54]:14041 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751438AbWGMFr6 (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Jul 2006 01:47:58 -0400 Message-ID: <44B5DD41.90705@zytor.com> Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:42:25 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 (X11/20060614) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Albert Cahalan CC: ak@suse.de, tytso@mit.edu, ebiederm@xmission.com, drepper@redhat.com, arjan@infradead.org, rdunlap@xenotime.net, akpm@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, libc-alpha@sourceware.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] Use uname not sysctl to get the kernel revision References: <787b0d920607122200m4785f7ddmddf40c079a7460cb@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <787b0d920607122200m4785f7ddmddf40c079a7460cb@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Albert Cahalan wrote: >> >> The numerical namespace for sysctl is unsalvagable imho. e.g. >> distributions regularly break it because there is no central >> repository of numbers so it's not very usable anyways in practice. > > Huh? How exactly is this different from system call numbers, > ioctl numbers, fcntl numbers, ptrace command numbers, and every > other part of the Linux ABI? > Mostly because some branches of the sysctl tree have dynamic content which is hard to marshal into a numeric form. -hpa