Overheating attributed to Freebsd --sysctl variablesnotavailable--

[Chris Pressey]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 00:07:14 -0500
"nw1" <network101 at covad.net> wrote:

> This does make absolute sense, but this isn't a publicly accessable
> machine, so it would rarely reach that max_load to cause it to
> overheat as its doing now, provided, I can find someone to answer the
> second outstanding question; Where are those sysctl variables that i
> was previously able to set?  They are no longer available

You know, it's a good question - just for kicks, I tried this on my two
FreeBSD machines:

FreeBSD 4.9-RC #1: Wed Oct 15 08:12:11 PDT 2003:

  # apm
  apm: can't open /dev/apm: Device not configured
  # sysctl machdep.apm_standby_delay
  machdep.apm_standby_delay: 1

FreeBSD 4.9-STABLE #1: Sat Nov  1 09:16:30 PST 2003:

  # apm
  APM version: 1.2
  APM Management: disabled
  AC Line status: unknown
  (... etc ...)
  # sysctl machdep.apm_standby_delay
  sysctl: unknown oid 'machdep.apm_standby_delay'

...which is a bit odd, to say the least.  If anything, I would've
expected the machine that doesn't have APM support compiled in to the
kernel, to be the one with no understanding of APM-related sysctls. 
But, it's the other way around.  Maybe something changed in the last two
weeks?  But you're running 4.8-RELEASE-p13 - I'd expect that to be
(essentially) older than either of my installations...

Anyway, those two oids don't seem to be documented under sysctl(8).  And
googling on them doesn't yield a lot.  I really have no idea, I just
thought I'd throw this out there as another data point.  (This issue
seems to be generating more heat than light, if you'll pardon the pun :)

-Chris