Re: [patch] proc.5: update the obsolete column name in net section

On 11/17/21 9:37 PM, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:

Could you please elaborate a bit on the commit message?

I don't know what the removed field was,
and can't find anything in the kernel source code
(it seems to predate git).

I tried to do my best, but I haven't got the good answer.

I searched on Bootlin's cross-referencer and noticed that there was a change in
the /proc/net/* content header between 1.3.98 [0] and 1.3.99 [1] kernel. The
"retrnsmt" column name has been added, but no "rexmits" column is mentioned here
at all. Moreover, the amount of retransmitted packets ('sp->retransmits') was
printed in 1.3.98 and earlier, despite the absense of the column name in the
header. As these changes have been done in pre-git era, I cannot determine who
is the author and what is the actual patch content.

For the man-pages project itself the first commit introduced "rexmits" is:
fea681daf (Import of man-pages 1.70) which seems to be an initial commit.

Can it be just an error and the "rexmits" did never exist in the kernel?

[0] https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/1.3.98/source/net/ipv4/proc.c#L74
[1] https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/1.3.99/source/net/ipv4/proc.c#L77