On 05/07/07 11:39, Ivan Voras wrote:
In the output of sysctl -oa I see values like:
kern.proc.all: Format:S,proc Length:75264
Dump:0x00030000000000002011fac380d4fec3...
kern.proc.proc_td: Format:N Length:75264
Dump:0x00030000000000002011fac380d4fec3...
kern.file: Format:S,xfile Length:18616
Dump:0x340000003e0c0000e803000006000000...
vfs.nfs.diskless_rootaddr: Format:%Ssockaddr_in Length:16
Dump:0x00000000000000000000000000000000...
debug.hashstat.rawnchash: Format:S,int Length:262144
Dump:0x00000000000000000000000000000000...
, etc., and some like:
kern.ipc.msqids: Format: Length:3520
Dump:0x00000000000000000000000000000000...
kern.ipc.sema: Format: Length:600 Dump:0x00000000000000000000000000000000...
and even some like:
machdep.consdev: Format:T,struct cdev * Length:4 Dump:0x00000000...
The first group has widely nonuniform "Format" fields, the second don't
have it at all, and the third just looks wrong (is that a NULL pointer
being exported from the kernel, just in case the userland doesn't have
it? :) ).
My proposal is to MIME-ify the Format fields, best presented in examples:
"S,proc" -> "x-struct/proc"
"S,xfile" -> "x-struct/xfile"
Etc.
GEOM tree is the easiest, it's just "text/xml", and the already present
text fields would be "text/plain".
If possible, the types should conform to
http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/ - but except for text and
XML types they usually won't.
The next step, obviously, but of dubious benefit, would be to stop
exporting binary data from the kernel and do it via XML, but that's
another thing, possibly another GSoC proposal :)
I can provide the patches for the format names. At this time I'm looking
for input: is this idea sane? Are there any utilities that actually
parse the type name?
The benefit of this conversion is that MIME types are easier on the eyes
and will help unfamiliar users understand what's going on.
How about adding a -m switch to sysctl that outputs the MIME compatible
format, leaving the other formats unchanged to avoid breaking something
someone is expecting?
Eric
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