Re: sysctl

[David KOENIG <karhudever@gmail.com>]

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Albert Cahalan wrote:
> In the wireless-extensions thread, Linus writes:
> 
>> In general, the answer to "when can we break user space" is very simple.
>>
>> Never.
>>
>> It's just not acceptable. We maintain old interfaces for years (and in
>> some cases, well over a decade by now), simply because the pain from not
>> doing so is horrendous, and it makes debugging impossible. You get into
>> situations where users need to upgrade to tools that don't work with
>> older
>> kernels, and can thus not downgrade, etc etc.
> 
> I guess the sysctl question has been answered then,
> especially since random normal apps use sysctl.
> 
> If it needs a maintainer, put me down.
> 
> I think the main problem was fixed long ago,
> by assigning fixed numbers to the enum values.
> Practically no other kernel code uses an enum
> for an ABI, and I think we can see why.
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> 
How about rewriting sysctl so that it refers to the real way (with /proc)?
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