Re: gnome on FreeBSD [procfs]...

[Martin Baulig <martin home-of-linux org>]

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Just to say this again ...

I am currently working on a library that fetches those information; it
can both be used on Linux and on other system where fetching those
information requires SUID Root (in which case it uses some kind of
server):

   http://www.home-of-linux.org/gnome/libgtop/

Sorry, it's late at night - so this mail gets a little bit short.
I'll write some more details about this tomorroy.

On Sun, 17 May 1998, Josh Sled wrote:

> To: gnome-list@gnome.org
> Subject: gnome on FreeBSD [procfs]...
> From: Josh Sled <jsled@scam.XCF.Berkeley.EDU>
> 
> If you're considering running gnome on FreeBSD, don't expect the full gnome
> experience... 
> 
> One of the cooler programs in the packages [I think it's been called the
> "coolest gnome app"] is gtop... gtop uses /proc/stat and /proc/meminfo, which
> don't exist in FreeBSD... not in 2.2.2, or 2.2.6 or 3.0-current, apparently...
> 
> cpuload [and wmload for windowmaker] uses /proc/stat [non-existant on
> FreeBSD]

Using libgtop, this is done via glibtop_get_cpu ().

> memusage uses /proc/stat

[...] glibtop_get_mem ()

> netload uses /proc/net

[...] not yet implemented.

> Many other Linux applications use special files in the procfs which do not
> exist in FreeBSD's procfs... 
> 
> I, therefore, have four options:
> 
> 0) go through and modify all the programs to work on FreeBSD [PAIN].
>    This might not even be possible... I attempted to do this with wmload
>    a couple of weeks ago, but can't find a way to get nice and free times
>    with getrusage(...)

This would be a very bad idea - this would be too much work just to port
it to one single system - the same work would have to be done for any
other system one wants to use GNOME on ...

Wait a little bit until my libgtop is ready for use and I'll help you with
that - we can then rewrite all those code to use the libgtop interface -
it is designed to be easily portable to all systems.

> 1) Modify FreeBSD's procfs code to support all the linux-like special
>    services.  This might be a bit beyond my ability...

Would be impossible for anyone without root access on the machine, and it
would be hard to convice sysadmins.

You cannot modify the code of SunOS, Solaris, DEC OSF/1 ...

> 2) Encourage the FreeBSD people to do 1...

Then, there's still the problem with SunOS, DEC OSF/1, Solaris, ...

> 3) Swtich to a "real" flava' of Linux...

I think he wanted to use it under FreeBSD ?

- -----------------------------------------------------------------
   Martin Baulig - Angewandte Mathematik - Universitaet Trier

   baulig@castor.uni-trier.de, http://www.home-of-linux.org/
   Key: 1024-bit key with ID C8178435 created 1997/01/24 
   ID:  67 C1 84 A0 47 F5 11 C5  5F 68 4C 84 99 05 C3 92
   Finger me for public key or fetch finger.txt from the url above
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