On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 02:10:21PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
| Random <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| 
| > I was thinking about some of the tuneable parameters within the OpenSolaris 
kernel, and thought that these should be accessible directly through the /proc 
filesystem, a la Linux.  Is this something that would be useful to do?
| 
| It is wrong to put these parameters into /proc anyway because they don't
| beling there even in a read-only way.
| 
| -     Solaris supports tuneables in /etc/system since ~ 1992.
| 
| -     Many of the Linux tuneables don't need to be tuned on Solaris.

.. and the goal should really be zero tunables (the system should be as
self tuning as possible -- you don't set your spark timing and fuel mixture
from the dash of your car ever morning do you?).  A good number of the
tunables that remain are well known are knobs into really old code that
should probably be rewritten, or is already on the chopping block.

Rightfully, PSARC has started whacking people with a big stick who try
to introduce new kernel tunables.  The few tunables that do make it through
are typically now implemented within the resource controls framework,
rather than being system global, which is often too big of a hammer
(max-shm-memory is one example of this).  The mere existence of tunables
in some places in the kernel (the VM and drivers being a few sore spots)
simply points out that there are gaps in the architecture that need to
be filled, rather than relying on the user to provide the glue.

Perhaps it's a difference in philosophy between Linux and Solaris..
we don't expect our users to be experts at tuning, and aim for having
things just work out of the box.

-- 
Eric Lowe       Solaris Kernel Development              Austin, Texas
Sun Microsystems.  We make the net work.                x64155/+1(512)401-1155
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