The new MIB service implements the sysctl(2) system call which, as
we adopt more NetBSD code, is an increasingly important part of the
operating system API. The system call is implemented in the new
service rather than as part of an existing service, because it will
eventually call into many other services in order to gather data,
similar to ProcFS. Since the sysctl(2) functionality is used even
by init(8), the MIB service is added to the boot image.
MIB stands for Management Information Base, and the MIB service
should be seen as a knowledge base of management information.
The MIB service implementation of the sysctl(2) interface is fairly
complete; it incorporates support for both static and dynamic nodes
and imitates many NetBSD-specific quirks expected by userland. The
patch also adds trace(1) support for the new system call, and adds
a new test, test87, which tests the fundamental operation of the
MIB service rather thoroughly.