system calls, like uname

[Kai Henningsen]

rob at current.nu (Robert W. Current)  wrote on 15.07.99 in <378D67F2.68819A7F at current.nu>:

> For example, an app that returns the CPU, Manufacture, Model, any
> features (like MMX, 3D-Now, etc), which are generally in /proc/cpuinfo
> (if it's still text, and not binary, isn't 2.2.x drifted into binary,
> and Red Hat patched it to still be text?).

Nope. Linus is not interested in binary interfaces in /proc - on the  
contrary: they should be human-readable. My original 2.2.7 /proc/cpuinfo  
is definitely text.

If you want to have a generic "give me all hardware info" facility (which  
doesn't sound all that useful to me, but hey), the way to go is to have a  
program that returns the stuff on stdout. At least that would be portable  
to any kernel change or even to non-Linux systems.

I don't see the justification for making this part of a library, let alone  
a system call.

Oh, and if you want to make this utility useful at least for tech support,  
don't stop at hardware. Include stuff like shared library versions, kernel  
version, whatever.

> users to more painlessly recompile source code to completely "optimize"
> or "tune" it for thier specific hardware allowing them a significant
> preformance boost (maybe 20% to 35%).

Ugh. Please, no. *If* there is a legitimate application (which should be  
extremely rare), you don't want to wade through this thing.

MfG Kai