linux/Documentation/sysctl
Linus Torvalds 57d19e80f4 Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/trivial
* 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jikos/trivial: (39 commits)
  b43: fix comment typo reqest -> request
  Haavard Skinnemoen has left Atmel
  cris: typo in mach-fs Makefile
  Kconfig: fix copy/paste-ism for dell-wmi-aio driver
  doc: timers-howto: fix a typo ("unsgined")
  perf: Only include annotate.h once in tools/perf/util/ui/browsers/annotate.c
  md, raid5: Fix spelling error in comment ('Ofcourse' --> 'Of course').
  treewide: fix a few typos in comments
  regulator: change debug statement be consistent with the style of the rest
  Revert "arm: mach-u300/gpio: Fix mem_region resource size miscalculations"
  audit: acquire creds selectively to reduce atomic op overhead
  rtlwifi: don't touch with treewide double semicolon removal
  treewide: cleanup continuations and remove logging message whitespace
  ath9k_hw: don't touch with treewide double semicolon removal
  include/linux/leds-regulator.h: fix syntax in example code
  tty: fix typo in descripton of tty_termios_encode_baud_rate
  xtensa: remove obsolete BKL kernel option from defconfig
  m68k: fix comment typo 'occcured'
  arch:Kconfig.locks Remove unused config option.
  treewide: remove extra semicolons
  ...
2011-05-23 09:12:26 -07:00
..
00-INDEX sysctl: remove obsolete comments 2011-01-13 08:03:18 -08:00
README Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
abi.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
fs.txt Documentation: file handles are now freed 2011-03-16 10:47:03 -07:00
kernel.txt Documentation: default_message_level is a typo 2011-02-11 15:14:10 +01:00
net.txt net: filter: Just In Time compiler for x86-64 2011-04-27 23:05:08 -07:00
sunrpc.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
vm.txt doc: fix 3 typos in sysctl/vm.txt 2011-04-06 07:09:35 -07:00

README

Documentation for /proc/sys/		kernel version 2.2.10
	(c) 1998, 1999,  Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>

'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation
for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in
the source...'

Well, this documentation is written because some people either
don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't
have the time or knowledge to read the source code.

Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to
be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-)

==============================================================

Legal blurb:

As usual, there are two main things to consider:
1. you get what you pay for
2. it's free

The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of
this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you
screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't
feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you...

But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using
only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of
it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that
you're the last RTFMing person to screw up.

In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror
stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org>

Rik van Riel.

==============================================================

Introduction:

Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel
at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you
don't even need special tools to do it!
In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config
facilities:
- a running Linux system
- root access
- common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days)
- knowledge of what all those values mean

As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of
several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about
one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece
by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'.

The subdirs are about:
abi/		execution domains & personalities
debug/		<empty>
dev/		device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
fs/		specific filesystems
		filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
		binfmt_misc <Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt>
kernel/		global kernel info / tuning
		miscellaneous stuff
net/		networking stuff, for documentation look in:
		<Documentation/networking/>
proc/		<empty>
sunrpc/		SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
vm/		memory management tuning
		buffer and cache management

These are the subdirs I have on my system. There might be more
or other subdirs in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd
really like to hear about it :-)