1=========================== 2Documentation for /proc/sys 3=========================== 4 5Copyright (c) 1998, 1999, Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org> 6 7------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8 9'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation 10for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in 11the source...' 12 13Well, this documentation is written because some people either 14don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't 15have the time or knowledge to read the source code. 16 17Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to 18be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-) 19 20------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 21 22Legal blurb: 23 24As usual, there are two main things to consider: 25 261. you get what you pay for 272. it's free 28 29The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of 30this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you 31screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't 32feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you... 33 34But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using 35only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of 36it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that 37you're the last RTFMing person to screw up. 38 39In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror 40stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org> 41 42Rik van Riel. 43 44-------------------------------------------------------------- 45 46Introduction 47============ 48 49Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel 50at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you 51don't even need special tools to do it! 52In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config 53facilities: 54 55- a running Linux system 56- root access 57- common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days) 58- knowledge of what all those values mean 59 60As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of 61several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about 62one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece 63by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'. 64 65This documentation is about: 66 67=============== =============================================================== 68abi/ execution domains & personalities 69<$ARCH> tuning controls for various CPU architecture (e.g. csky, s390) 70crypto/ <undocumented> 71debug/ <undocumented> 72dev/ device specific information (e.g. dev/cdrom/info) 73fs/ specific filesystems 74 filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning 75 binfmt_misc <Documentation/admin-guide/binfmt-misc.rst> 76kernel/ global kernel info / tuning 77 miscellaneous stuff 78 some architecture-specific controls 79 security (LSM) stuff 80net/ networking stuff, for documentation look in: 81 <Documentation/networking/> 82proc/ <empty> 83sunrpc/ SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS) 84user/ Per user namespace limits 85vm/ memory management tuning 86 buffer and cache management 87xen/ <undocumented> 88=============== =============================================================== 89 90These are the subdirs I have on my system or have been discovered by 91searching through the source code. There might be more or other subdirs 92in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd really like to hear about 93it :-) 94 95.. toctree:: 96 :maxdepth: 1 97 98 abi 99 fs 100 kernel 101 net 102 sunrpc 103 user 104 vm 105