RFC: sysctl -f filename

[Alfred Perlstein]

On 12/1/12 8:22 PM, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> Does sysctl(8) really need to learn to parse files?
>
> Can't rc.d/sysctl be modified to do the fixup?
>
> This regex seems to work:
> val=`echo $val | sed -e "s@ *\"\(.*\)\" *@\1@" -e "s@ *'\(.*\)' *@\1@"`

Upon catching up with emails and seeing netbsd's code, I want to say I 
don't feel that strongly about this, although I do wonder how the patch 
handles trailing whitespace since I wasn't able to test it:

example:
"kern.foo='bar'...."
replace the "...." with spaces.

-Alfred
>
>
> -Alfred
>
> On 12/1/12 8:50 AM, Hiroki Sato wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>   I would like comments about the attached patch for sysctl(8) to add a
>>   new option "-f filename".  It supports reading of a file with
>>   key=value lines.
>>
>>   As you probably know, we already have /etc/sysctl.conf and it is
>>   processed by rc.d/sysctl shell script in a line-by-line basis.  The
>>   problem I want to fix is a confusing syntax of /etc/sysctl.conf.  The
>>   file supports a typical configuration file syntax but problematic in
>>   some cases.  For example:
>>
>>    kern.coredump=1
>>
>>   works well in /etc/sysctl.conf, but
>>
>>    kern.coredump="1"
>>
>>   does not work.  Similarly, it is difficult to use whitespaces and "#"
>>   in the value:
>>
>>    OK: kern.domainname=domain\ name\ with\ spaces
>>    NG: kern.domainname="domain name with spaces"
>>    NG: kern.domainname=domain\ name\ including\ #\ character
>>    NG: kern.domainname=domain\ name\ including\ \#\ character
>>
>>   The attached patch solves them, and in addition it displays an error
>>   message with a line number if there is something wrong in the file
>>   like this:
>>
>>    % cat -n /etc/sysctl.conf
>>    ...
>>    10  kern.coredump=1
>>    11  kern.coredump2=1
>>    ...
>>
>>    % /etc/rc.d/sysctl start
>>    sysctl: kern.coredump at line 10: Operation not permitted
>>    sysctl: unknown oid 'kern.coredump2' at line 11
>>
>>    # /etc/rc.d/sysctl start
>>    kern.coredump: 1 -> 1
>>    sysctl: unknown oid 'kern.coredump2' at line 11
>>
>>   Any comments are welcome.
>>
>> -- Hiroki
>
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