On Sun, 10 Nov 1996 17:47:31 -0800 (PST) 
 Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca> wrote:

 > No doubt. This happens on a pretty regular basis.

Not _that_ regular...

 > This is not criticism: this is an honest question. Is there a reason
 > we've not moved to using the /kern and /proc filesystems for this
 > sort of stuff, or is it just something we've not gotten around to
 > yet? Are there good reasons for not using /kern and /proc?

There are two reasons why using /kern and /proc for the kmem
utilities is a bad idea:

	(a) In order to use them, it requires people to load up
	    their kernels with kernfs and procfs.  This is bad,
	    particularly in an "embedded" application.  For example,
	    we have a couple of NetBSD IPv6 routers here, and the
	    kernels are lean, but being able to use iostat and
	    vmstat is good.

	(b) We'd have to keep the kmem interface anyhow, because
	    we don't want to give up looking at kernel port-mortems.

Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939