FreeBSD/Linux Kernel Cross Reference
sys/Documentation/sysctl/

	Name	Size	Last modified (GMT)	Description
	Parent directory		2009-05-27 19:05:28
	README	2647 bytes	1999-07-06 03:04:47
	fs.txt	4836 bytes	2000-01-11 02:15:58
	kernel.txt	7988 bytes	2001-09-30 19:26:08
	sunrpc.txt	784 bytes	1999-07-06 03:04:47
	vm.txt	8972 bytes	2002-11-28 23:53:08

     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:
    debug/          <empty>
    dev/            device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
    fs/             specific filesystems
                    filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
                    binfmt_misc <linux/Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt>
    kernel/         global kernel info / tuning
                    miscellaneous stuff
    net/            networking stuff, for documentation look in:
                    <linux/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 :-)