sensors fun..

[Ivan Voras]

John Baldwin wrote:

>I think the "public" interface that systat, 
> monitoring daemons, SNMP, etc. should be a userland interface that can have 
> multiple backends.  It can pull data from a sensor implemented in userland or 
> a sensor implemented in the kernel.

This looks very reasonable. Since it appears there's a need for two 
distinct types of sensors (polling / event based) and two ways of doing 
it (kernel / userland), and the 4 combinations can't share a lot of code 
or semantics, why not extend the scope of it all:

- keep the OpenBSD sensors interface as the kernel-only poll-based part 
(Please don't underestimate the fact that it works and that it's already 
gained usage in other systems!)
- create an event-based kernel interface
- create a poll-based userland interface
- create an event-based userland interface.
- create an umberella userland library / interface that knows how to 
talk to each of them and exports a unified interface to whatever 
applications need it.

The last 4 parts can then be ported by the other BSDs that use the first 
framework.

(nothing's too difficult for a man that doesn't have to do it himself :) )