Re: [PATCH] Undeprecate the sysctl system call

Andi Kleen
2006-10-18T11:34:10Z

Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> writes:
>
> Its very simple: sysctl was a neat BSD syscall that turned out to be
> less ideal than using the fs for it. We added it, we supported it, we
> get to keep it. We just stick notes in the docs saying "please use /proc
> instead".

You call that numerical name space neat? IMHO it was a totally bogus
idea. There is already a perfectly fine file system name space, why
add another one?

Anyways, imho the right solution is to remove the numerical
sysctl infrastructure (including most of sysctl.h), but keep
sys_sysctl() with a small mapping table that maps the few
numerical sysctls (mostly KERN_VERSION) that are actually used to
path names internally. The rest should be ENOSYS.

-Andi