kern/120869: [procfs] 'stat' shows that all files have 0-length when they are actually not empty

[Robert Watson]

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, remko at FreeBSD.org wrote:

> After a bit of discussion, this is not something which we are going to fix. 
> It is not worth the hassle. If you think this should be different, we do 
> welcome patches. Thanks fo rusing FreeBSD!

Just as two data points here: Solaris attempts to provide coherent file sizes 
in /proc (at least to the extent that tried a few for objects where it is 
remotely possible), and the Linux 2.6.12 kernel I have on a box locally 
basically doesn't.

My view is that it's a synthetic file system with data that varies dynamically 
at runtime, and that while it wouldn't hurt to produce file size information 
that's correct, it's quite a bit of work to do so and that I wouldn't 
prioritize it above other, more critical things that need to happen.  We 
should certainly evaluate any patches that come in for possible inclusion, 
assuming they don't muck up the internals of procfs too much; it's not clear 
to me if they necessarily do so or not.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge