*BSD News Article 30565


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From: John Dyson <dysonj@delphi.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs
Subject: Re: /proc filesystem strangeness
Date: Mon, 9 May 94 12:09:37 -0500
Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice)
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <Bo8OMh5.dysonj@delphi.com>
References: <2qaqct$ick@meatball.rwwa.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bos1c.delphi.com
X-To: Robert Withrow <witr@rwwa.com>

Robert Withrow <witr@rwwa.com> writes:
 
>I sent the following as a bug, but I am not familiar
>with the semantics of the /proc filesystem outside
>of SVR4.  Can others familiar with these semantics
>on other OSes comment?  This releates to 1.1-GAMMA.
 
The /proc filesystem is strange on FreeBSD up through current.  It really
is not for general use and was implemented to allow ps to be more kernel
version independent.  The next (post 1.1) release will have a proper
procfs.  DG and I installed it as a stopgap measure, since when I
redid alot of the VM stuff, the on disk structure for the swap_pager.c
changed drastically (much better, but different.)  Since ps likes to
peek around on swap space, we decided to install a simple procfs that
allows the kernel to find the stuff for ps.
 
Sorry for the confusion, but those are the facts... :-)
 
 
John
dyson@implode.root.com