README 2.6 KB

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  1. Documentation for /proc/sys/ kernel version 2.2.10
  2. (c) 1998, 1999, Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>
  3. 'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation
  4. for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in
  5. the source...'
  6. Well, this documentation is written because some people either
  7. don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't
  8. have the time or knowledge to read the source code.
  9. Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to
  10. be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-)
  11. ==============================================================
  12. Legal blurb:
  13. As usual, there are two main things to consider:
  14. 1. you get what you pay for
  15. 2. it's free
  16. The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of
  17. this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you
  18. screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't
  19. feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you...
  20. But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using
  21. only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of
  22. it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that
  23. you're the last RTFMing person to screw up.
  24. In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror
  25. stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org>
  26. Rik van Riel.
  27. ==============================================================
  28. Introduction:
  29. Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel
  30. at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you
  31. don't even need special tools to do it!
  32. In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config
  33. facilities:
  34. - a running Linux system
  35. - root access
  36. - common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days)
  37. - knowledge of what all those values mean
  38. As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of
  39. several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about
  40. one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece
  41. by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'.
  42. The subdirs are about:
  43. abi/ execution domains & personalities
  44. debug/ <empty>
  45. dev/ device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
  46. fs/ specific filesystems
  47. filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
  48. binfmt_misc <Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt>
  49. kernel/ global kernel info / tuning
  50. miscellaneous stuff
  51. net/ networking stuff, for documentation look in:
  52. <Documentation/networking/>
  53. proc/ <empty>
  54. sunrpc/ SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
  55. vm/ memory management tuning
  56. buffer and cache management
  57. These are the subdirs I have on my system. There might be more
  58. or other subdirs in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd
  59. really like to hear about it :-)