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<refsect1> |
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<title>Description</title> |
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<para> |
| 112 |
< |
The statgrab library provides a cross platform interface to getting |
| 112 |
> |
The statgrab library provides a cross-platform interface to getting |
| 113 |
|
system statistics. Each of the function calls returns a structure |
| 114 |
|
containing statistics. See the manual page for each individual |
| 115 |
|
function for more details on usage. |
| 116 |
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</para> |
| 117 |
|
<para> |
| 118 |
< |
<function>statgrab_init(void)</function> should be the first |
| 119 |
< |
function you call before you start to use libstatgrab. This |
| 120 |
< |
function on *bsd systems opens up the kernel structures and |
| 121 |
< |
leaves them open for future use. Because of this, any special |
| 122 |
< |
privileges the program has (e.g. setgid kmem) can be dropped |
| 123 |
< |
after this call, and all the libstatgrab calls should continue to |
| 124 |
< |
work. It is therefore a good idea to call |
| 118 |
> |
<function>statgrab_init</function> must be the first |
| 119 |
> |
function you call before you start to use libstatgrab; it performs all |
| 120 |
> |
the one-time initialisation operations that need setuid/setgid |
| 121 |
> |
privileges (for instance, on *BSD it opens a descriptor to be able to |
| 122 |
> |
read kernel structures later on, and on Solaris it reads the device |
| 123 |
> |
mappings that are only accessible by root). Once this has run, |
| 124 |
> |
the other libstatgrab functions no longer need elevated privileges. |
| 125 |
> |
It is therefore a good idea to call |
| 126 |
|
<function>statgrab_drop_privileges</function>, which discards |
| 127 |
|
setuid and setgid privileges, immediately after you call |
| 128 |
|
<function>statgrab_init</function>, unless your application has |
| 136 |
|
<para> |
| 137 |
|
The library was originally written to support the i-scream central |
| 138 |
|
monitoring system, but has since become a standalone package. It |
| 139 |
< |
has been ported to work on Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. |
| 139 |
> |
has been ported to work on Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris and Cygwin. |
| 140 |
|
</para> |
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|
</refsect1> |
| 142 |
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|
