This might seem a little odd, but when a postgresql ebuild tells me to change /etc/sysctl.conf's SHMMAX variable, i tend to want to know more about it. I discovered that sysctl.conf is not well documented. the man page for sysctl and sysctl.conf do not explain any of the options! It says that sysctl modifies kernel parameters at runtime, and with sysctl you can list available parameters's but there is still no documentation in the man pages. I'm not sure if this it out of the scope of man pages, but I think at least they should mention where one can read more about the parameters. (i know, this is not even a gentoo bug really, but maybe someone who knows more than me can help) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
Most of the sysctl documentation can be found in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sysctl
i thought it would probably be in there, but i see no good reason to keep it out of the man/info pages if there's a .conf file eh?
Sending this bug over to the base-system herd since sysctl is part of sys-apps/procps.
sysctl.conf is part of baselayout, not procps that package incorrectly installs a copy
sysctl.conf is basically a one-to-one mapping with /proc/sys/ so any kernel code that allows for configuration via sysctl could be set via sysctl.conf this means that sysctl.conf is basically just a runtime kernel config file ... any documentation would have to be maintained across kernel releases and will never cover everything use the sysctl docs in the Documentation folder of the linux source tree (your current kernel)
