index.rst 3.1 KB

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  1. ===========================
  2. Documentation for /proc/sys
  3. ===========================
  4. Copyright (c) 1998, 1999, Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>
  5. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  6. 'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation
  7. for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in
  8. the source...'
  9. Well, this documentation is written because some people either
  10. don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't
  11. have the time or knowledge to read the source code.
  12. Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to
  13. be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-)
  14. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  15. Legal blurb:
  16. As usual, there are two main things to consider:
  17. 1. you get what you pay for
  18. 2. it's free
  19. The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of
  20. this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you
  21. screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't
  22. feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you...
  23. But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using
  24. only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of
  25. it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that
  26. you're the last RTFMing person to screw up.
  27. In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror
  28. stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org>
  29. Rik van Riel.
  30. --------------------------------------------------------------
  31. Introduction
  32. ============
  33. Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel
  34. at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you
  35. don't even need special tools to do it!
  36. In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config
  37. facilities:
  38. - a running Linux system
  39. - root access
  40. - common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days)
  41. - knowledge of what all those values mean
  42. As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of
  43. several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about
  44. one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece
  45. by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'.
  46. This documentation is about:
  47. =============== ===============================================================
  48. abi/ execution domains & personalities
  49. debug/ <empty>
  50. dev/ device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
  51. fs/ specific filesystems
  52. filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
  53. binfmt_misc <Documentation/admin-guide/binfmt-misc.rst>
  54. kernel/ global kernel info / tuning
  55. miscellaneous stuff
  56. net/ networking stuff, for documentation look in:
  57. <Documentation/networking/>
  58. proc/ <empty>
  59. sunrpc/ SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
  60. vm/ memory management tuning
  61. buffer and cache management
  62. user/ Per user per user namespace limits
  63. =============== ===============================================================
  64. These are the subdirs I have on my system. There might be more
  65. or other subdirs in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd
  66. really like to hear about it :-)
  67. .. toctree::
  68. :maxdepth: 1
  69. abi
  70. fs
  71. kernel
  72. net
  73. sunrpc
  74. user
  75. vm