www.LinuxHowtos.org howtos, tips&tricks and tutorials for linux

from small one page howto to huge articles all in one place

Other .linuxhowtos.org sites:toolsntoys.linuxhowtos.org
gentoo.linuxhowtos.org

poll results

Last additions:

using iotop to find disk usage hogs

words:

887

views:

20254

userrating:

average rating: 3.4 (206 votes) (1=very good 6=terrible)

May 25th. 2007:

Words

486

Views

36037

why adblockers are bad

Workaround and fixes for the current Core Dump Handling vulnerability affected kernels

words:

161

views:

20992

userrating:

average rating: 1.0 (50 votes) (1=very good 6=terrible)

April, 26th. 2006:

Words

Views

16062

New subdomain: toolsntoys.linuxhowtos.org

You are here: manpages

SYSCTL

Section: (8)
Updated: 21 Sep 1999
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

sysctl - configure kernel parameters at runtime

SYNOPSIS

sysctl [-n] [-e] variable ...
sysctl [-n] [-e] [-q] -w variable=value ...
sysctl [-n] [-e] [-q] -p <filename>
sysctl [-n] [-e] -a
sysctl [-n] [-e] -A

DESCRIPTION

sysctl is used to modify kernel parameters at runtime. The parameters available are those listed under /proc/sys/. Procfs is required for sysctl(8) support in Linux. You can use sysctl(8) to both read and write sysctl data.

PARAMETERS

variable: The name of a key to read from. An example is kernel.ostype. The '/' separator is also accepted in place of a '.'.
variable=value: To set a key, use the form variable=value, where variable is the key and value is the value to set it to. If the value contains quotes or characters which are parsed by the shell, you may need to enclose the value in double quotes. This requires the -w parameter to use.
-n: Use this option to disable printing of the key name when printing values.
-e: Use this option to ignore errors about unknown keys.
-N: Use this option to only print the names. It may be useful with shells that have programmable completion.
-q: Use this option to not display the values set to stdout.
-w: Use this option when you want to change a sysctl setting.
-p: Load in sysctl settings from the file specified or /etc/sysctl.conf if none given. Specifying - as filename means reading data from standard input.
-a: Display all values currently available.
-A: Display all values currently available in table form.