linux/Documentation/sysctl
Linus Torvalds 59d53737a8 Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew)
Merge second set of updates from Andrew Morton:
 "More of MM"

* emailed patches from Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>: (83 commits)
  mm/nommu.c: fix arithmetic overflow in __vm_enough_memory()
  mm/mmap.c: fix arithmetic overflow in __vm_enough_memory()
  vmstat: Reduce time interval to stat update on idle cpu
  mm/page_owner.c: remove unnecessary stack_trace field
  Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt: describe /proc/<pid>/map_files
  mm: incorporate read-only pages into transparent huge pages
  vmstat: do not use deferrable delayed work for vmstat_update
  mm: more aggressive page stealing for UNMOVABLE allocations
  mm: always steal split buddies in fallback allocations
  mm: when stealing freepages, also take pages created by splitting buddy page
  mincore: apply page table walker on do_mincore()
  mm: /proc/pid/clear_refs: avoid split_huge_page()
  mm: pagewalk: fix misbehavior of walk_page_range for vma(VM_PFNMAP)
  mempolicy: apply page table walker on queue_pages_range()
  arch/powerpc/mm/subpage-prot.c: use walk->vma and walk_page_vma()
  memcg: cleanup preparation for page table walk
  numa_maps: remove numa_maps->vma
  numa_maps: fix typo in gather_hugetbl_stats
  pagemap: use walk->vma instead of calling find_vma()
  clear_refs: remove clear_refs_private->vma and introduce clear_refs_test_walk()
  ...
2015-02-11 18:23:28 -08:00
..
00-INDEX sysctl: remove obsolete comments 2011-01-13 08:03:18 -08:00
abi.txt
fs.txt Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2012-08-01 10:26:23 -07:00
kernel.txt livepatch: kernel: add TAINT_LIVEPATCH 2014-12-22 15:40:48 +01:00
net.txt net-timestamp: no-payload only sysctl 2015-02-02 18:46:51 -08:00
README
sunrpc.txt
vm.txt Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2015-02-11 18:23:28 -08:00

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 :-)