Re: sysctl() considered harmful

Andi Kleen (ak@muc.de)
09 Jan 1998 04:34:56 +0100


Martin von Loewis <martin@mira.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de> writes:

> > All arp_* have already disappeared.
>
> Looking at 2.1.78, I see that
>
> sysctl_arp_timeout
> sysctl_arp_max_tries
> sysctl_arp_res_time
> sysctl_arp_confirm_interval
> sysctl_arp_max_pings
> sysctl_arp_dead_res_time
>
> are still used in net/ipv4/arp.c.

They are already gone in the vger tree.

> I don't object dropping sysctl variables. If you cannot longer support
> them, drop them. If you think you need to expose new variables, expose
> them. PLEASE don't expose new variables under old names. This is exactly
> what Andries Brouwer complained about, and rightly so.

Actually they weren't old in 2.1 :) Many of them got introduced into
2.0 long _after_ 2.1 was splitted off. And noone cared about syncing
2.1. That's what you get for adding features to a 'stable' tree. I
hope that 2.2 won't do the same mistake.

-Andi