rationale behind /proc filesystem? (wuz Re: 2.0, loggings....)

Hasdi R Hashim (hasdi@engin.umich.edu)
Mon, 10 Jun 1996 23:58:16 -0400 (EDT)


On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, Jeff Johnson wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, Aaron Tiensivu wrote:
> >
> > That's the main reason /proc is there, from what I can gather.. so you can
> > write 'support' programs that can do exactly what 'Portato' or 'ps' does.
> >
>
> BUT... opening files in /proc sometimes up to 3 times a second does not
> wear well for the system CPU load. A kernel feature would work immensely
> better.

What do you propose? A syscall?

This is one thing I STILL don't get about /proc filesystem. Just adding
one simple swiss-army kind of syscall should give you all the information
you need about the kernel without even checking the /proc filesystem. A
syscall implementation is a lot smaller /proc and more efficient (all that
open/read/write/close stuff - yuk!)

What is the rationale behind /proc filesystem? Is this part of making
almost everything in UNIX look like a file? From my understanding, the aim
of /proc filesystem is enable programs like ps to check on the system
status without poking to version/config specific part of the kernel (did I
get that right?). Why not add a syscall? Can somebody explain this me? :}

Regards,

Hasdi
still-with-DOS-programming-mentality