Subject: Re: Using unused sysctl's
To: Simon Burge <simonb@wasabisystems.com>
From: Luke Mewburn <lukem@wasabisystems.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 05/09/2001 14:14:57
On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 02:10:28PM +1000, Simon Burge wrote:
> Folks,
>
> Currently there's two sysctl's undef hw. that are unused (and never
> have been - they were in the initial import):
>
> { "disknames", CTLTYPE_STRING } /* strings: disk drive names */
> { "diskstats", CTLTYPE_STRUCT } /* struct: diskstats[] */
>
> FreeBSD doesn't appear to use these either (and I'm assuming that
> OpenBSD doesn't either). I don't have access to any BSDI boxes to
> check there. I'd like to use these to return info about disk usage
> (that will be used by iostat amongst other things).
>
> >From the looks of things, "disknames" was intended to return a NUL
> seperated list of attached disks. I'd like to change this so that it
> returns a space seperated list instead - I suspect the most common use
> of this sysctl would be as
>
> disklist=`sysctl hw.disknames`
>
> in shell scripts, and having the list returned NUL seperated doesn't
> win anything...
>
> Anyone against this?
Sounds great!