[TUHS] UNIX of choice these days?

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Dario Niedermann <dario at darioniedermann.it> wrote on Sat, 23 Sep 2017
11:17:04 +0200:

>> I just can't forgive FreeBSD for abandoning the proc filesystem  ...

It can be there, if you wish.

Here are two snippets from a recent log of a recent "pkg update -f ;
pkg upgrade" run on a one of my many *BSD family systems, this one
running FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE-p1:

	Message from openjdk8-8.131.11:
	======================================================================

	This OpenJDK implementation requires fdescfs(5) mounted on
	/dev/fd and procfs(5) mounted on /proc.

	If you have not done it yet, please do the following:

		mount -t fdescfs fdesc /dev/fd mount -t procfs proc
		/proc

	To make it permanent, you need the following lines in
	/etc/fstab:

		fdesc /dev/fd fdescfs rw 0 0 proc /proc procfs rw 0 0

	======================================================================

	Message from rust-1.18.0:
	======================================================================

	Printing Rust backtraces requires procfs(5) mounted on /proc .
	If you have not already done so, please do the following:

		mount -t procfs proc /proc

	To make it permanent, you need the following lines in /etc/fstab:

		proc    /proc           procfs          rw      0       0

	======================================================================

I've seen such messages in many package installations in the *BSD
family, and I generally add the suggested lines to /etc/fstab.

Perhaps others more familiar with BSD internals might comment on
whether it is many non-BSD software, like the Java Developer's Kit,
and Mozilla's rust language, that mostly would like /proc support, or
whether there are plenty of native-BSD packages that expect it too.

The second edition of

	Marshall Kirk McKusick, George V. Neville-Neil, and Robert N. M. Watson
	The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System
	ISBN 0-201-70245-2 (hardcover), 0-321-96897-2 (hardcover)

has 5 pages with mention of the /proc filesystem, and nothing that
suggests that it is in any way deprecated.

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
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