[ On Mon, September 14, 1998 at 13:41:08 (-0400), Jim Wise wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: /kern/kernel 
>
> To this point, it has _not_ been necessary to keep kernfs mounted for
> any part of NetBSD's operation.  Furthermore, we provide a very nice API
> and command line tool (sysctl(3) and sysctl(8)) to get and set exactly
> this kind of information.  Argument over whether sysctl provides a
> usable solution to the question at hand is perfectly valid, but making
> kernfs mandatory probably is not...

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call sysctl(3) a "very nice API".`

In fact if you look into the implmentation you'll find all kinds of
warts and limitations.

The FreeBSD folks had a go at cleaning it up, but they still ran into
problems.  "It's not as easy as it looks!"

The proper solution would be even more ugly than some people seem to
think kernfs is -- namely putting full ASN.1 and SNMP-like MIBs into the
kernel.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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