Re: procfs problems

Benny Amorsen (amorsen@sscnet.com)
29 Apr 1997 16:35:34 +0200


>>>>> "PW" == Perry Wagle <wagle@tuple.cse.ogi.edu> writes:

PW> Here's my take on the procfs thing:

PW> I want to have my modules add things to /proc (char devices,
PW> directories, etc.) so I can talk to the kernel-land stuff from
PW> user-land. I'd like the communications to be fast, so will
PW> probably avoid ascii streams, but I might get tired of debugging
PW> that and opt for "easily machine parsable". I don't find writing
PW> PERL (and TK) scripts to present it to humans to be hard. In
PW> addition, this keeps some code bloat out of the kernel.

If I need a program to read a /proc file, I could just as easily make
a kernel call instead of imposing the additional overhead of a
pseudo-filesystem. If this is the view most people have, I say dump
/proc altogether.

Personally I use /proc as a debugging tool, which makes
human-readability an absolute must. /proc is plenty fast for most of
the stuff it is used for.

Benny