On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 01:07:47AM -0400, Chapman Flack wrote:
> 
> Yes ... they *could* all use sysctls ... the theory is lovely ...
> but about 18 of 'em currently don't, and by what date do you predict
> all 18 will have been re-engineered to use sysctls? 

I don't want to get into whether or not the proposal is right or wrong
but you are not correct with the 18 number there - some of the
binaries you have listed only use a kvm groveller if you give it the
right command line flags.  From memory, vmstat does this, so you can
examine a crash dump - in this case you don't have much choice but to
grovel through the memory image.  I believe this is the case with some
of the other tools

I know someone has recently put in a PR about systat requiring the
kernel image, hopefully this will get fixed when someone gets some
time.  I wonder if this would make a nice Google SoC project - convert
all the tools reliant on kvm grovelling to use sysctl.

-- 
Brett Lymn