Based on kernel version 2.6.32. Page generated on 2009-12-11 16:23 EST.
1 2 Except for a few extremely rare exceptions user space applications do not use 3 the binary sysctl interface. Instead everyone uses /proc/sys/... with 4 readable ascii names. 5 6 Recently the kernel has started supporting setting the binary sysctl value to 7 CTL_UNNUMBERED so we no longer need to assign a binary sysctl path to allow 8 sysctls to show up in /proc/sys. 9 10 Assigning binary sysctl numbers is an endless source of conflicts in sysctl.h, 11 breaking of the user space ABI (because of those conflicts), and maintenance 12 problems. A complete pass through all of the sysctl users revealed multiple 13 instances where the sysctl binary interface was broken and had gone undetected 14 for years. 15 16 So please do not add new binary sysctl numbers. They are unneeded and 17 problematic. 18 19 If you really need a new binary sysctl number please first merge your sysctl 20 into the kernel and then as a separate patch allocate a binary sysctl number. 21 22 (ebiederm[AT]xmission[DOT]com, June 2007)