| Andrew Morton | 97d8f83 | 2007-07-15 23:41:20 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | |
| 2 | Except for a few extremely rare exceptions user space applications do not use |
| 3 | the binary sysctl interface. Instead everyone uses /proc/sys/... with |
| 4 | readable ascii names. |
| 5 | |
| 6 | Recently the kernel has started supporting setting the binary sysctl value to |
| 7 | CTL_UNNUMBERED so we no longer need to assign a binary sysctl path to allow |
| 8 | sysctls to show up in /proc/sys. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Assigning binary sysctl numbers is an endless source of conflicts in sysctl.h, |
| 11 | breaking of the user space ABI (because of those conflicts), and maintenance |
| 12 | problems. A complete pass through all of the sysctl users revealed multiple |
| 13 | instances where the sysctl binary interface was broken and had gone undetected |
| 14 | for years. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | So please do not add new binary sysctl numbers. They are unneeded and |
| 17 | problematic. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | If you really need a new binary sysctl number please first merge your sysctl |
| 20 | into the kernel and then as a separate patch allocate a binary sysctl number. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | (ebiederm@xmission.com, June 2007) |