1 2Except for a few extremely rare exceptions user space applications do not use 3the binary sysctl interface. Instead everyone uses /proc/sys/... with 4readable ascii names. 5 6Recently the kernel has started supporting setting the binary sysctl value to 7CTL_UNNUMBERED so we no longer need to assign a binary sysctl path to allow 8sysctls to show up in /proc/sys. 9 10Assigning binary sysctl numbers is an endless source of conflicts in sysctl.h, 11breaking of the user space ABI (because of those conflicts), and maintenance 12problems. A complete pass through all of the sysctl users revealed multiple 13instances where the sysctl binary interface was broken and had gone undetected 14for years. 15 16So please do not add new binary sysctl numbers. They are unneeded and 17problematic. 18 19If you really need a new binary sysctl number please first merge your sysctl 20into the kernel and then as a separate patch allocate a binary sysctl number. 21 22(ebiederm@xmission.com, June 2007) 23