> As far as I know, only FreeBSD has a string-based sysctl implementation.

Nod.

> Something which always confused me about Linux' procfs - what have all
> these kernel variables got to do with process state?  We used to have a
> kernfs which was intended for this kind of thing but it rotted after
> people started extending sysctl for the purpose.

About as much as having a /usr/bin for the slower binaries on the 40Mbyte
moving head disk has relationship to /usr nowdays. /proc is basically
both process and machine state in Linux. It got expaneded on.

Alan