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Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 16:33:54 +0100
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Jakob_=D8stergaard?= <jakob@unthought.net>
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Cc: Daniel Kobras <kobras@tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de>,
        Tim Jansen <tim@tjansen.de>
Subject: PROPOSAL: dot-proc interface [was: /proc stuff]
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Here's my stab at the problems - please comment,

We want to avoid these problems:
 1)  It is hard to parse (some) /proc files from userspace
 2)  As /proc files change, parsers must be changed in userspace

Still, we want to keep on offering
 3)  Human readable /proc files with some amount of pretty-printing
 4)  A /proc fs that can be changed as the kernel needs those changes


Taking care of (3) and (4):

Maintaining the current /proc files is very simple, and it offers the system
administrator a lot of functionality that isn't reasonable to take away now. 

       * They should stay in a form close to the current one *


Taking care of (1) and (2):

For each file "f" in /proc, there will be a ".f" file which is a
machine-readable version of "f", with the difference that it may contain extra
information that one may not want to present to the user in "f".

The dot-proc file is basically a binary encoding of Lisp (or XML), e.g. it is a
list of elements, wherein an element can itself be a list (or a character string,
or a host-native numeric type.  Thus, (key,value) pairs and lists thereof are
possible, as well as tree structures etc.

All data types are stored in the architecture-native format, and a simple
library should be sufficient to parse any dot-proc file.


So, we need a small change in procfs that does not in any way break
compatibility - and we need a few lines of C under LGPL to interface with it.

Tell me what you think - It is possible that I could do this (or something
close) in the near future, unless someone shows me the problem with the
approach.

Thank you,

-- 
................................................................
:   jakob@unthought.net   : And I see the elder races,         :
:.........................: putrid forms of man                :
:   Jakob ?stergaard      : See him rise and claim the earth,  :
:        OZ9ABN           : his downfall is at hand.           :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............:
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