From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S965104AbWGKEKu (ORCPT ); Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:10:50 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S965105AbWGKEKu (ORCPT ); Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:10:50 -0400 Received: from ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com ([166.70.28.69]:58805 "EHLO ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S965104AbWGKEKt (ORCPT ); Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:10:49 -0400 From: ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman) To: "Randy.Dunlap" Cc: akpm@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] sysctl: Document that sys_sysctl will be removed. References: <20060710155051.326e49da.rdunlap@xenotime.net> Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:10:12 -0600 In-Reply-To: <20060710155051.326e49da.rdunlap@xenotime.net> (Randy Dunlap's message of "Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:50:51 -0700") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.110004 (No Gnus v0.4) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org "Randy.Dunlap" 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 > 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