linux/Documentation/sysctl
Linus Torvalds 0f776dc377 Some big changes this month, headlined by the addition of a new formatted
documentation mechanism based on the Sphinx system.  The objectives here
 are to make it easier to create better-integrated (and more attractive)
 documents while (eventually) dumping our one-of-a-kind, cobbled-together
 system for something that is widely used and maintained by others.  There's
 a fair amount of information what's being done, why, and how to use it in:
 
   https://lwn.net/Articles/692704/
   https://lwn.net/Articles/692705/
 
 Closer to home, Documentation/kernel-documentation.rst describes how it
 works.
 
 For now, the new system exists alongside the old one; you should soon see
 the GPU documentation converted over in the DRM pull and some significant
 media conversion work as well.  Once all the docs have been moved over and
 we're convinced that the rough edges (of which are are a few) have been
 smoothed over, the DocBook-based stuff should go away.
 
 Primary credit is to Jani Nikula for doing the heavy lifting to make this
 stuff actually work; there has also been notable effort from Markus Heiser,
 Daniel Vetter, and Mauro Carvalho Chehab.
 
 Expect a couple of conflicts on the new index.rst file over the course of
 the merge window; they are trivially resolvable.  That file may be a bit of
 a conflict magnet in the short term, but I don't expect that situation to
 last for any real length of time.
 
 Beyond that, of course, we have the usual collection of tweaks, updates,
 and typo fixes.
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Merge tag 'docs-for-linus' of git://git.lwn.net/linux

Pull documentation updates from Jonathan Corbet:
 "Some big changes this month, headlined by the addition of a new
  formatted documentation mechanism based on the Sphinx system.

  The objectives here are to make it easier to create better-integrated
  (and more attractive) documents while (eventually) dumping our
  one-of-a-kind, cobbled-together system for something that is widely
  used and maintained by others.  There's a fair amount of information
  what's being done, why, and how to use it in:

    https://lwn.net/Articles/692704/
    https://lwn.net/Articles/692705/

  Closer to home, Documentation/kernel-documentation.rst describes how
  it works.

  For now, the new system exists alongside the old one; you should soon
  see the GPU documentation converted over in the DRM pull and some
  significant media conversion work as well.  Once all the docs have
  been moved over and we're convinced that the rough edges (of which are
  are a few) have been smoothed over, the DocBook-based stuff should go
  away.

  Primary credit is to Jani Nikula for doing the heavy lifting to make
  this stuff actually work; there has also been notable effort from
  Markus Heiser, Daniel Vetter, and Mauro Carvalho Chehab.

  Expect a couple of conflicts on the new index.rst file over the course
  of the merge window; they are trivially resolvable.  That file may be
  a bit of a conflict magnet in the short term, but I don't expect that
  situation to last for any real length of time.

  Beyond that, of course, we have the usual collection of tweaks,
  updates, and typo fixes"

* tag 'docs-for-linus' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (77 commits)
  doc-rst: kernel-doc: fix handling of address_space tags
  Revert "doc/sphinx: Enable keep_warnings"
  doc-rst: kernel-doc directive, fix state machine reporter
  docs: deprecate kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt
  doc/sphinx: Enable keep_warnings
  Documentation: add watermark_scale_factor to the list of vm systcl file
  kernel-doc: Fix up warning output
  docs: Get rid of some kernel-documentation warnings
  doc-rst: add an option to ignore DocBooks when generating docs
  workqueue: Fix a typo in workqueue.txt
  Doc: ocfs: Fix typo in filesystems/ocfs2-online-filecheck.txt
  Documentation/sphinx: skip build if user requested specific DOCBOOKS
  Documentation: add cleanmediadocs to the documentation targets
  Add .pyc files to .gitignore
  Doc: PM: Fix a typo in intel_powerclamp.txt
  doc-rst: flat-table directive - initial implementation
  Documentation: add meta-documentation for Sphinx and kernel-doc
  Documentation: tiny typo fix in usb/gadget_multi.txt
  Documentation: fix wrong value in md.txt
  bcache: documentation formatting, edited for clarity, stripe alignment notes
  ...
2016-07-26 13:05:11 -07:00
..
00-INDEX sysctl: remove obsolete comments 2011-01-13 08:03:18 -08:00
abi.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
fs.txt pipe: limit the per-user amount of pages allocated in pipes 2016-01-19 19:25:21 -05:00
kernel.txt rcu: sysctl: Panic on RCU Stall 2016-06-15 16:00:05 -07:00
net.txt bpf: add generic constant blinding for use in jits 2016-05-16 13:49:32 -04:00
README Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
sunrpc.txt Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
vm.txt Documentation: add watermark_scale_factor to the list of vm systcl file 2016-07-18 08:27:01 -06:00

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 :-)