Re: [PATCH] sysctl: Document that sys_sysctl will be removed.

[ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)]

"Randy.Dunlap" <rdunlap@xenotime.net> writes:

>
> aha, patch 1/2 and patch 2/2 would have helped that.  :)

Sorry.  I finally have found the original deprecation commit.

> commit 073cd7b5515a7f5b74dbb4917c717e3c390013e7
> Author: ak <ak>
> Date:   Sat Jul 12 16:45:55 2003 +0000
> 
>     [PATCH] Deprecate numerical sysctl
>     
>     Deprecate the numerical sysctl name space. People can use /proc/sys
>     instead.
>     
>     The numeric name space was never well maintained and especially
>     in distribution kernels is not very consistent (everybody has their
>     own extensions, conflicting with others). It's also a great
>     source of rejects when merging patches.  The name-based /proc/sys
>     is a much better interface for this, which people should use instead.
>     
>     Discussion of this on l-k found no advocate for it, so it seems to not
>     be very popular anyways.
>     
>     This patch deprecates numerical name space accesses to make it possible
>     to remove them in the future. The only exception is kernel.version,
>     which is used by glibc (this one has to be maintained forever)
>     
>     BKrev: 3f103b43JQH2fwSWpRLoTKziIiqH1w

The comment about kernel.version is odd. That information is available in
uname so I can't imagine why sys_sysctl would be an interesting source.
Also kernel.version is the compile string so it is pretty uninteresting
to glibc.

I guess if it is really needed someone will scream before the code gets
deleted completely.

Eric