X-Recipient: archive-cygwin@delorie.com X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Message-ID: <47CDDFB6.8A192531@dessent.net> Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:48:06 -0800 From: Brian Dessent X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cygwin@cygwin.com Subject: Re: writing to /proc file system References: <1614.10.38.32.167.1204643570.squirrel@mail.tmorton.com> <20080304152915.GA428@calimero.vinschen.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-IsSubscribed: yes Reply-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com NightStrike wrote: > I'm pretty sure it's not writable on any system, let alone cygwin. > It's not a real filesystem per se. It's instead a read-only gateway > into the kernel. What? No. The entire /proc/sys tree on Linux is writable, which allows you to tune a great number of kernel parameters at runtime, including networking stack parameters, filesystems, cacheing, memory management, etc. In fact this forms the basis for the entire sysctl settings system. For example you can clear all disk caches with "echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches". More at: Brian -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/