man/man4/options.4

.\"	$OpenBSD: options.4,v 1.226 2012/04/06 15:42:56 jsing Exp $
.\"	$NetBSD: options.4,v 1.21 1997/06/25 03:13:00 thorpej Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1998 Theo de Raadt
.\" Copyright (c) 1998 Todd Miller
.\" Copyright (c) 1998 Gene Skonicki
.\" Copyright (c) 1996
.\" 	Perry E. Metzger.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
.\"    must display the following acknowledgment:
.\"	This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project
.\"	by Perry E. Metzger.
.\" 4. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products
.\"    derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
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.Dd $Mdocdate: April 6 2012 $
.Dt OPTIONS 4
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm options
.Nd kernel configuration options
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Cd option ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
This manual page describes a number of miscellaneous kernel
configuration options that may be specified in a kernel config file.
See
.Xr config 8
for information on how to configure and build kernels.
.Em Note:
options are passed to the compile process as
.Fl D
flags to the C compiler.
.Sh COMPATIBILITY OPTIONS
.Bl -ohang
.It Cd option COMPAT_43
This option enables compatibility with
.Bx 4.3 .
It adds ioctls for
.Dv TIOCGETP
and
.Dv TIOCSETP .
It also enables the deprecated
.Dv NTTYDISC
terminal line discipline.
It provides backwards compatibility with the
.Dq old
SIOC[GS]IF{ADDR,DSTADDR,BRDADDR,NETMASK} interface ioctls, including
binary compatibility for code written before the introduction of the
.Li sa_len
field in sockaddrs.
.It Cd option COMPAT_LINUX
On those architectures that support it, this enables binary
compatibility with
.Em Linux
ELF and a.out
applications built for the same architecture.
This option is supported on the i386 architecture.
See
.Xr compat_linux 8 .
.El
.Sh DEBUGGING OPTIONS
.Bl -ohang
.It Cd makeoptions DEBUG="-g"
The
.Fl g
flag causes
.Pa bsd.gdb
to be built in addition to
.Pa bsd .
.Pa bsd.gdb
is useful for debugging kernels and their crash dumps with gdb.
A crash dump can be debugged by starting
.Xr gdb 1
with the kernel name
.Pf ( Pa bsd.gdb )
as an argument (no core file) and then use the
.Xr gdb 1
command
.Dq target kvm COREFILE .
.It Cd makeoptions PROF="-pg"
The
.Fl pg
flag causes the kernel to be compiled with support for profiling.
The
.Cm option GPROF
is required for the kernel compile to succeed.
.It Cd option ACCOUNTING
Adds support for the
.Xr acct 2
system call.
.It Cd option DDB
Compiles in a kernel debugger for diagnosing kernel problems.
See
.Xr ddb 4
for details.
.It Cd option DDB_SAFE_CONSOLE
Allows a break into the kernel debugger during boot.
Useful when debugging problems that can cause
.Xr init 8
to fail.
.It Cd option DDB_STRUCT
Compiles in symbolic information about the various data structures used by the
kernel, for use within the kernel debugger.
This option is currently not supported on alpha, m68k, m88k and vax based
platforms.
.It Cd option DEBUG
Turns on miscellaneous kernel debugging.
Since options are turned into preprocessor defines (see above),
.Cm option DEBUG
is equivalent to doing a
.Em #define DEBUG
throughout the kernel.
Much of the kernel has
.Em #ifdef DEBUG
conditional debugging code.
Note that many parts of the kernel (typically device drivers) include their own
.Em #ifdef XXX_DEBUG
conditionals instead.
This option also turns on certain other options, notably
.Cm option KMEMSTATS .
.It Cd option DIAGNOSTIC
Adds code to the kernel that does internal consistency checks.
This code will cause the kernel to panic if corruption of internal data
structures is detected.
.It Cd option GPROF
Adds code to the kernel for kernel profiling with
.Xr kgmon 8 .
.It Cd option KGDB
Compiles in a remote kernel debugger stub for diagnosing kernel problems
using the
.Dq remote target
feature of gdb.
See
.Xr kgdb 7
for details.
.Em Note:
not available on all architectures.
.It Cd option KTRACE
Adds hooks for the system call tracing facility, which allows users to
watch the system call invocation behavior of processes.
See
.Xr ktrace 1
for details.
.It Cd option NO_PROPOLICE
Do not compile the kernel with the ProPolice stack protection.
See
.Xr gcc-local 1
for more information about ProPolice.
.It Cd option PTRACE
Adds hooks for the process tracing facility, allowing a process to
control and observe another process.
See
.Xr ptrace 2
for details.
.It Cd option SMALL_KERNEL
Removes some features and some optimizations from the kernel to reduce the
size of the resulting kernel binary.
This option is used on some installation media and should not be used
for general purpose kernels.
.It Cd option VFSLCKDEBUG
Turns on debugging for the Virtual File System interface.
See
.Xr vfs 9
for details.
.El
.Sh FILE SYSTEMS
.Bl -ohang
.It Cd option CD9660
Includes code for the ISO 9660 + Rock Ridge file system, which is the
standard file system used on many CD-ROMs.
It also supports Joliet extensions.
See
.Xr mount_cd9660 8
for details.
.It Cd option EXT2FS
Includes code implementing the Second Extended File System
.Em ( EXT2FS ) ,
commonly used on the Linux operating system.
This option is provided here for compatibility.
Some specific features of
.Em EXT2FS
like the "behavior on errors" are not implemented.
This file system
can't be used with
.Li uid_t
or
.Li gid_t
values greater than 65535.
Also, the filesystem will not function correctly on architectures with
differing byte-orders.
That is, a big-endian machine will not be able to read an
ext2fs filesystem created on an i386 or other little-endian machine.
See
.Xr mount_ext2fs 8
for details.
.It Cd option FFS
Includes code implementing the Berkeley Fast File System
.Em ( FFS ) .
Most machines need this if they are not running diskless.
.It Cd option FFS2
Includes code implementing the enhanced Fast File System
.Em ( FFS2 ) .
.It Cd option MFS
Include the memory file system
.Em ( MFS ) .
This file system stores files in swappable memory, and produces
notable performance improvements when it is used as the file store
for
.Pa /tmp
or similar mount points.
See
.Xr mount_mfs 8
for details.
.It Cd option MSDOSFS
Includes support for the MS-DOS FAT file system.
The kernel also implements the Windows 95
extensions which permit the use of longer, mixed-case file names.
See
.Xr mount_msdos 8
and
.Xr fsck_msdos 8
for details.
.It Cd option NFSCLIENT
Include the client side of the
.Em NFS
(Network File System) remote file sharing protocol.
Although the bulk of the code implementing
.Em NFS
is kernel based, several user level daemons are needed for it to work.
See
.Xr mount_nfs 8
for details on NFS.
.It Cd option NTFS
Includes support for reading NTFS file systems.
See
.Xr mount_ntfs 8
for details.
.It Cd option PROCFS
Includes code for a special file system (conventionally mounted on
.Pa /proc )
in which the process space becomes visible in the file system.
Among other things, the memory spaces of processes running on the system are
visible as files, and signals may be sent to processes by writing to
.Pa ctl
files in the procfs namespace.
See
.Xr mount_procfs 8
for details.
.It Cd option UDF
Includes code for the UDF file systems typically found on DVD discs.
See
.Xr mount_udf 8
for details.
.It Cd option NNPFS
Includes the kernel support for the AFS-compatible Arla filesystem.
Since the xfs interface is simple and generic it can be used for other
filesystems as well.
See
.Xr mount_nnpfs 8
for details.
.El
.Sh FILE SYSTEM OPTIONS
.Bl -ohang
.It Cd option BUFCACHEPERCENT= Ns Ar integer
Percentage of RAM to use as a file system buffer.
It defaults to 5.
.It Cd option EXT2FS_SYSTEM_FLAGS
This option changes the behavior of the APPEND and IMMUTABLE flags
for a file on an
.Em EXT2FS
filesystem.
Without this option, the superuser or owner of the file can set and clear them.
With this option, only the superuser can set them, and they can't be cleared
if the securelevel is greater than 0.
See also
.Xr chflags 1 .
.It Cd option FFS_SOFTUPDATES
Enables a scheme that uses partial ordering of buffer cache operations
to allow metadata updates in FFS to happen asynchronously, increasing write
performance significantly.
Normally, the FFS filesystem writes metadata updates synchronously which exacts
a performance penalty in favor of filesystem integrity.
With soft updates, the performance of asynchronous writes is gained while
retaining the safety of synchronous metadata updates.
.Pp
Soft updates must be enabled on a per-filesystem basis.
See
.Xr mount 8
for details.
.Pp
Processors with a small kernel address space, such as the sun4 and sun4c, do
not have enough kernel memory to support soft updates.
Attempts to use this option with these CPUs will cause a kernel hang or panic
after a short period of use as the kernel will quickly run out of memory.
This is not related to the amount of physical memory present in the machine --
it is a limitation of the CPU architecture itself.
.It Cd option FIFO
Adds support for
.At V
style FIFOs (i.e.,
.Dq named pipes ) .
This option is recommended in almost all cases as many programs use these.
.It Cd option NFSSERVER
Include the server side of the
.Em NFS
(Network File System) remote file sharing protocol.
Although the bulk of the code implementing
.Em NFS
is kernel based, several user level daemons are needed for it to
work.
See
.Xr mountd 8
and
.Xr nfsd 8
for details.
.It Cd option QUOTA
Enables kernel support for file system quotas.
See
.Xr quotaon 8 ,
.Xr edquota 8 ,
.Xr repquota 8 ,
and
.Xr quota 1
for details.
Note that quotas only work on
.Dq ffs
file systems, although
.Xr rpc.rquotad 8
permits them to be accessed over
.Em NFS .
.It Cd option UFS_DIRHASH
This option enables using an in memory hash table to speed lookups
in large directories.
.El
.Sh MISCELLANEOUS OPTIONS
.Bl -ohang
.It Cd option APERTURE
Provide in-kernel support for controlling VGA framebuffer mapping
and PCI configuration registers by user-processes
(such as an X Window System server).
This option is supported on the
.Va alpha ,
.Va amd64 ,
.Va i386 ,
.Va macppc ,
and
.Va sparc64
architectures.
.It Cd option BOOT_CONFIG
Adds support for the
.Fl c
boot option (User Kernel Config).
Allows modification of kernel settings (e.g., device parameters) before
booting the system.
.It Cd option CRYPTO
Enables support for the kernel cryptographic framework.
See
.Xr crypto 9
for details.
While not IP specific, this option is usually used in conjunction with option
.Em IPSEC .
.It Cd option EISAVERBOSE
Makes the boot process more verbose for EISA peripherals.
.It Cd option INSECURE
Hardwires the kernel security level at \-1.
This means that the system always runs in securelevel 0 mode, even when
running multiuser.
See
.Xr init 8
for details on the implications of this.
The kernel secure level may be manipulated by the superuser by altering the
.Em kern.securelevel
sysctl variable.
(It should be noted that the securelevel may only be lowered by a call from
process ID 1, i.e.,
.Xr init 8 . )
See also
.Xr sysctl 8
and
.Xr sysctl 3 .
.It Cd option KMEMSTATS
The kernel memory allocator,
.Xr malloc 9 ,
will keep statistics on its performance if this option is enabled.
Note that this option is silently turned on by the
.Cm DEBUG
option.
.It Cd option LKM
Enables support for loadable kernel modules.
See
.Xr lkm 4
for details.
.Em Note:
This option is not yet available on all architectures.
.It Cd option MACOBIOVERBOSE
Makes the boot process more verbose for OBIO peripherals on the
.Va macppc
architecture.
.It Cd option MULTIPROCESSOR
On those architectures that have it, this enables multiprocessor support.
.It Cd option PCIVERBOSE
Makes the boot process more verbose for PCI peripherals
(vendor names and other information is printed, etc.).
.It Cd option PCMCIAVERBOSE
Makes the boot process more verbose for PCMCIA peripherals.
.It Cd option USER_LDT
Enable userland manipulation of per-process
Local Descriptor Table (LDT) entries;
see
.Xr i386_set_ldt 2
and the
.Va machdep.userldt
.Xr sysctl 8 .
This option is supported on the
.Va i386
architecture.
.It Cd option USER_PCICONF
Enables the user level access to the PCI bus configuration space
through ioctls on the
.Pa /dev/pci
device.
It's used by the
.Xr Xorg 1
server on some architectures.
See
.Xr pci 4
for details.
.It Cd option UVM_SWAP_ENCRYPT
Enables kernel support for encrypting pages that are written out to
swap storage.
Swap encryption prevents sensitive data from remaining
on the disk even after the operating system has been shut down.
This option should be turned on if cryptographic filesystems are used.
The sysctl variable
.Em vm.swapencrypt.enable
controls its behaviour.
See
.Xr sysctl 8
and
.Xr sysctl 3
for details.
.El
.Sh NETWORKING OPTIONS
.Bl -ohang
.It Cd option ALTQ
Enables ALTQ (Alternate Queuing).
See
.Xr pfctl 8
and
.Xr pf.conf 5
to set up the interface transmission rate and queueing disciplines.
.Em ALTQ_CBQ ,
.Em ALTQ_RED ,
.Em ALTQ_PRIQ
and
.Em ALTQ_HFSC
are enabled by default with option
.Em ALTQ
in
.Ox .
See
.Xr altq 9
for details on ALTQ.
.It Cd option ENCDEBUG
This option enables debugging information to be conditionally logged
in case IPSEC encounters errors.
The option
.Em IPSEC
is required along with this option.
Debug logging can be turned on/off through the use of the
.Em net.inet.ip.encdebug
sysctl variable.
If
.Em net.inet.ip.encdebug
is 1, debug logging is on.
See
.Xr sysctl 8
and
.Xr sysctl 3
for details.
.It Cd option INET
Includes support for the TCP/IP protocol stack.
This option is currently required.
See
.Xr inet 4
for details.
.It Cd option INET6
Includes support for the IPv6 protocol stack.
See
.Xr inet6 4
for details.
Unlike
.Em INET ,
.Em INET6
enables multicast routing code as well.
This option requires
.Em INET
at this moment, but it should not.
.It Cd option IPSEC
This option enables IP security protocol support.
See
.Xr ipsec 4
for more details.
.It Cd option KEY
Enables PFKEYv2 (RFC 2367) support.
While not IP specific, this option is usually used in conjunction with option
.Em IPSEC .
.It Cd option MROUTING
Includes support for IP multicast routers.
.Em INET
should be set along with this.
Multicast routing is controlled by the
.Xr mrouted 8
daemon.
.It Cd option ND6_DEBUG
The option sets the default value of
.Em net.inet6.icmp6.nd6_debug
to 1,
for debugging IPv6 neighbor discovery protocol handling.
See
.Xr sysctl 3
for details.
.It Cd option PIPEX
Includes PIPEX in-kernel acceleration for PPPoE, L2TP or PPTP.
.It Cd option PPP_BSDCOMP
Enables BSD compressor for PPP connections.
.It Cd option PPP_DEFLATE
For use in conjunction with PPP_BSDCOMP; provides an interface to zlib for PPP
for deflate compression/decompression.
.It Cd option SOCKET_SPLICE
Enables zero-copy socket splicing in the kernel.
See
.Dv SO_SPLICE
in
.Xr setsockopt 2
and
.Xr sosplice 9
for details.
.It Cd option TCP_ECN
Turns on Explicit Congestion Notification (RFC 3168).
.Em ECN
allows intermediate routers to use the Congestion Experienced
codepoint in the IP header as an indication of congestion, and allows
TCP to adjust the transmission rate using this signal.
Both communication endpoints negotiate enabling
.Em ECN
functionality at the TCP connection establishment.
.It Cd option TCP_FACK
Turns on forward acknowledgements allowing a more precise estimate of
outstanding data during the fast recovery phase by using
.Em SACK
information.
This option can only be used together with
.Em TCP_SACK .
.It Cd option TCP_SACK
Turns on selective acknowledgements.
Additional information about
segments already received can be transmitted back to the sender,
thus indicating segments that have been lost and allowing for
a swifter recovery.
Both communication endpoints need to support
.Em SACK .
The fallback behaviour is NewReno fast recovery phase, which allows
one lost segment to be recovered per round trip time.
When more than one segment has been dropped per window, the transmission can
continue without waiting for a retransmission timeout.
.It Cd option TCP_SIGNATURE
Turns on support for the TCP MD5 Signature option (RFC 2385).
This is used by
Internet backbone routers to provide per-packet authentication for the TCP
packets used to communicate BGP routing information.
You will also need a
routing daemon that supports this option in order to actually use it.
.El
.Sh OPERATION RELATED OPTIONS
.Bl -ohang -compact
.It Cd option BUFPAGES= Ns Ar value
.It Cd option NBUF= Ns Ar value
These options set the number of pages available for the buffer cache.
Their default value is a machine dependent value, often calculated as
between 5% and 10% of total available RAM.
.Pp
.It Cd option DST= Ns Ar value
If
.Ar value
is non-zero, indicates that the hardware realtime clock device
is one hour ahead of the offset given in
.Sq TIMEZONE ,
due to Daylight Saving Time (DST).
If
.Ar value
is zero, the hardware realtime clock device is not in Daylight Saving Time.
.Pp
.It Cd option NKMEMPAGES= Ns Ar value
.It Cd option NKMEMPAGES_MAX= Ns Ar value
.It Cd option NKMEMPAGES_MIN= Ns Ar value
Size of kernel malloc area in PAGE_SIZE-sized logical pages.
This area is covered by the kernel submap
.Em kmem_map .
The kernel attempts to auto-size this map based on the amount of
physical memory in the system.
Platform-specific code may place bounds on this computed size,
which may be viewed with the
.Xr sysctl 8
variable
.Em vm.nkmempages .
See
.Pa /usr/include/machine/param.h
for the default upper and lower bounds.
The related options
.Sq NKMEMPAGES_MIN
and
.Sq NKMEMPAGES_MAX
allow the bounds to be overridden in the kernel configuration file.
These options are provided in the event the computed value is
insufficient resulting in an
.Dq out of space in kmem_map
panic.
.Pp
.It Cd option \&"TIMEZONE= Ns Ar value Ns Cm \&"
.Ar value
indicates the time zone offset of the hardware realtime clock device,
in minutes,
from UTC.
It is useful when the hardware realtime clock device is configured
with local time,
when dual-booting
.Ox
with other operating systems on a single machine.
For instance, if the hardware realtime clock is set to Tokyo time,
.Ar value
should be
.Li \&-540
as Tokyo local time is 9 hours ahead of UTC.
Double quotes are needed when specifying a negative
.Ar value .
.El
.Sh SCSI SUBSYSTEM OPTIONS
.Bl -ohang
.It Cd option SCSI_DELAY= Ns Ar value
Delay for
.Ar value
seconds before starting to probe the first SCSI bus.
This can be used if a SCSI device needs extra time to get ready.
.It Cd option SCSIDEBUG
Enable printing of SCSI subsystem debugging info to the console.
Each of
.Em SCSIDEBUG_LEVEL ,
.Em SCSIDEBUG_BUSES ,
.Em SCSIDEBUG_TARGETS
and
.Em SCSIDEBUG_LUNS
must have non-zero values for any debugging info to be printed.
Only
.Em SCSIDEBUG_LEVEL
has a default value (SDEV_DB1 | SDEV_DB2) that is non-zero.
.It Cd option SCSIDEBUG_BUSES= Ns Ar value
Define which SCSI buses will print debug info.
Each bit enables debugging info for the corresponding bus.
e.g. a value of 0x1 enables debug info for bus 0.
.It Cd option SCSIDEBUG_LEVEL= Ns Ar value
Define which of the four levels of debugging info are printed.
Each bit enables a level, and multiple levels are specified by setting multiple
bits.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
0x0010	(SDEV_DB1) SCSI commands, errors, and data
0x0020	(SDEV_DB2) routine flow
0x0040	(SDEV_DB3) routine internals
0x0080	(SDEV_DB4) miscellaneous addition debugging
.Ed
.Pp
If
.Em SCSIDEBUG_LEVEL
is undefined, a value of 0x0030 (SDEV_DB1|SDEV_DB2) is used.
.It Cd option SCSIDEBUG_LUNS= Ns Ar value
Define which SCSI luns will print debug info.
Each bit enables debugging info for the corresponding lun.
.It Cd option SCSIDEBUG_TARGETS= Ns Ar value
Define which SCSI targets will print debug info.
Each bit enables debugging info for the corresponding target.
.It Cd option SCSITERSE
Terser SCSI error messages.
This omits the table for decoding ASC/ASCQ info, saving about 30KB.
.El
.Sh SYSTEM V IPC OPTIONS
.Bl -ohang
.It Cd option SEMMNI= Ns Ar value
Number of semaphore identifiers (also called semaphore handles
and semaphore sets) available in the system.
Default value is 10.
The kernel allocates memory for the control structures at startup,
so arbitrarily large values should be avoided.
.It Cd option SEMMNS= Ns Ar value
Maximum number of semaphores in all sets in the system.
Default value is 60.
.It Cd option SEMMNU= Ns Ar value
Maximum number of semaphore undo structures in the system.
Default value is 30.
.It Cd option SEMUME= Ns Ar value
Maximum number of per-process undo operation entries in the
system.
Semaphore undo operations are invoked by the kernel when
.Xr semop 2
is called with the SEM_UNDO flag and the process holding
the semaphores terminates unexpectedly.
Default value is 10.
.It Cd option SHMMAXPGS= Ns Ar value
Sets the maximum number of
.At V
style shared memory pages that are available through the
.Xr shmget 2
system call.
Default value is 1024 on most architectures.
See
.Pa /usr/include/machine/vmparam.h
for the default.
.It Cd option SYSVMSG
Includes support for
.At V
style message queues.
See
.Xr msgctl 2 ,
.Xr msgget 2 ,
.Xr msgrcv 2 ,
.Xr msgsnd 2 .
.It Cd option SYSVSEM
Includes support for
.At V
style semaphores.
See
.Xr semctl 2 ,
.Xr semget 2 ,
.Xr semop 2 .
.It Cd option SYSVSHM
Includes support for
.At V
style shared memory.
See
.Xr shmat 2 ,
.Xr shmctl 2 ,
.Xr shmdt 2 ,
.Xr shmget 2 .
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr intro 4 ,
.Xr files.conf 5 ,
.Xr config 8 ,
.Xr sysctl 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
man page first appeared in
.Ox 2.3 .
.Sh BUGS
The
.Em INET
option should not be required.