Re: /dev/drum versus libkvm?

[Hiten Pandya <hmp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

walt wrote:
> walt wrote:
>
> > I notice that libkvm uses some values defined in <sys/paths.h>
> > but one of those paths doesn't exist in DragonFly:
> >
> > #define __SYS_PATH_DRUM         "/dev/drum"
>
>
> <sigh>  The joke's on me again.  After reading thru the sourcecode
> for libkvm I see that the kvm_open() function completely *ignores* its
> third argument, and that's the argument that would have used /dev/drum.
> So it doesn't matter after all.
>
> I'd still like to know what is going to replace libkvm when it goes
> away, as Hiten predicts.  Would it be libkinfo?

	Not predicting, know for a fact. :-)

	Gather around children, as I have a tale to tell... some time ago,
	Joerg and I discussed that the current libkvm use is actually nor
	clean enough nor helping it make easier for writing programs that
	use information from things like struct proc, etc -- they end up
	becoming out-of-sync with an updated/different kernel thus giving
	us all sorts of problems.

	Secondly, we wanted to make use of sysctls for retrieving the
	information instead of making libkvm calls.  Such sysctl calls
	are currently used in a redundant manner.  For this, we wanted
	to introduce two APIs, one for accessing normal kernel data,
	while the other can be used for hard kernel core information
	access.

	That was the basic consensus if I recall correctly.  The APIs are
	not complete at the moment nor have we done a runner for converting
	them just yet because some things still need to be worked out.

			-Hiten
			Hiten Pandya