Re: [RFC] [PATCH] sysctl for the latecomers

[Amit Gud <agud@redhat.com>]

Chase Venters wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, Chase Venters wrote:
> Btw, wanted to add some comments on the specific approach:
> 
> 1. A ring hard-coded to 32 elements is IMO unuseable. While it may not 
> be a real limit for what use case you have in mind, if it's in the 
> kernel sooner or later someone else is going to use it and get bitten. 
> Imagine if they wrote in 33 entries, and the first one was some critical 
> security setting that ended up getting silently ignored...
> 
> 2. On the other hand, allowing it to grow unbounded is equally 
> unacceptable without a mechanism to list and clear the current "pending" 
> sysctl values. Unfortunately, at this point, you're starting to violate 
> "KISS".
> 

You figured it right, theres no "correct" number of elements that I 
could adhere to.

> Are the modules you refer to inserted during init at all? Because it 
> seems like it would be a lot more appropriate to just move sysctl until 
> after loading the modules, or perhaps running it again once they are 
> loaded.
> 

I have a case where sunrpc module gets inserted and 
sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries parameter is to be set _before_ nfs module 
is inserted. I agree that for this particular case user-space works 
(either udev rule, or modprobe.conf or sysctl after modprobe in 
initscripts), but am on a lookout for a more generic way for handling 
such cases - be it user-space or otherwise.


AG
-- 
May the source be with you.
http://www.cis.ksu.edu/~gud